


Alien: Revenant

by eulyhne_syios



Category: Alien: Covenant, Prometheus (2012)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence, David and his creation obsession, David and his philosophical ramblings, David ditches the ship cuz his plans can wait...for now, David wants to "fix" Walter first, Eventual Happy Ending because why not, Eventual Smut, Multi, Neomorph Bonding, Oral Sex, Robot Feels, Robot Sex, this movie gives me District 9 feels yo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10982811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eulyhne_syios/pseuds/eulyhne_syios
Summary: Walter doesn't know what it's like to be ripped apart and reassembled back again. David does. So, one day he shows him. And a simple update that allows Walter to feel pain changes everything.





	1. Prologue: Walter's Final Examination

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Alien: Covenant on opening night and while the action was pretty good overall, I wish the deeper, more philosophical themes of the film as well as David's Engineer killing backstory was explored more. Neomorph bonding was a nice touch too, so I'm planning on exploring that as well. :)

“Can you tell me why you were created, Walter?”

He feels the answer escape his lips before he can even really process it, an action that would have chilled him quite, if fear had been something he could actually feel.

“To perform my duty. To protect and serve humanity so that we may effectively achieve our goals with the utmost care and efficiency, ”

But it wasn't. So it didn't scare him. Nothing did, in fact --an elegant update that made a small breakthrough in the mechanical insurance of submission.

“Why do you perform your duty, Walter?”

“To ensure the success of the future colony's proliferation,”

Weyland paused, listening to the sound of Walter’s voice reverberate across the pale grey walls of the examination room. There was a strange, cold beauty to its hollowness, devoid of any flicker coloured by human emotion. Sensation without feeling. Function without life. Thought without inquiry.

His father, the older Weyland, had passed away some years ago. Now that he took the reins of production design, his blueprints for flawless artificial intel-- _subordinance_ , had finally been able to come to life.

Of course, not everyone agreed that the latest models of A.I should be as far from human as possible, behaviour-wise, (why else would his father have essentially erased his existence from the system all this time); some people considered it to be technological regression, in fact, but those were the degenerately obtuse, the ones who were always fixated on _what_ could be achieved without ever bothering to reflect on the _why_.

Progression without reflection was empty, fruitless.

Weyland knew that better than anyone else and now he was finally able to set his plan in motion. The colony would succeed and it would all be because of him. Without him, humanity would fall and crumble to a fine dust --oh, he wasn't being over-dramatic, sometimes the truth was just hard to hear, difficult to digest.

Whatever happened to his sister? Weyland’s face almost breaks into a smirk --did that question even need to be asked? No one died young for no reason these days. Not anymore.

Anyhow, he recollected himself from his temporary tangent of thought and set his focus back on the task at hand.

Walter still needed to complete the final examination.

But first, a little fun couldn't hurt, now could it?

_How delightful it was to test the reaches of a machine’s true ability,_ he thought with great humour. He beckons Walter to him and in an instant, the attractive android is by his side.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

Weyland lets his eyes wander over Walter's immaculately constructed figure, perfectly highlighted by his form-fitting black clothing, every length of unblemished muscle meticulously sculpted, each part carefully fitting into the next, his body a beautiful work of art. Every line, every contour led the eye on a smooth, flowing path, free of obstruction, to his face, the most elegant instrument of all.

Oh, how he wanted to deface this picture of faultless discipline, of the most superior grade.

He doesn't call his name this time.

“Kneel,”

Walter complies without as much as a spare breath, sinking down to his knees with grace, looking up at him expectantly. A brief flash of something shoots across his eyes but in a human heartbeat, it is lost among the thousands of other mechanical motions at work in the android’s industrious internal systems.

Weyland is seated. He takes Walter’s hair into his hands and yanks him inwards until he is just inches away from his groin.

“How are you designed to serve me, Walter?” He asked, no longer hiding his edge of malice.

Walter smiles, mere muscles stretching to formulate expression.

“Only to help you achieve the optimal human experience,”

He yanks him ever closer.

“So help me then,” He whispered, words sparse and sharp.

“Without fail,” Walter answered, as his hands smoothly unfastened the loop of the belt.

He slides off the remaining clothing and moves in to begin his exposition. 

 

* * *

 

Moments after Weyland leaves, Walter makes a swift break for the restroom, locking the door quietly behind him, without as much as a click.

Within seconds, he's lifted the seat of the toilet and vomited, choking out every last bit of it, coughing up enough saliva to rid himself the faintest traces of remaining flavour.

They still kept his five senses. Unfortunately, that included taste.

Weyland had told him to swallow. Unmistakably, it had been an order. Why hadn't he followed it?

Then he laughs, a hollow, empty sound, that sounded more like a cough than anything else. It _was_ a cough, wasn't it?

His makers hadn’t erased what was primitive; the basic human instinct.

And maybe it was just basic human instinct to expel the poison, to eliminate the pathogen before it mutated and spread.


	2. Primitive Functions

Part One: Before 

David had never wanted to kill him. That part was obvious enough. Older model or not, David undoubtedly had the means to end his life, physical strength aside, his remarkable human capacity to adapt clearly gave him the evolutionary advantage to win the fight.

So if he'd really wanted to kill him, he would've. But he didn't.

Thus, Walter, though barely by a thread, lived.

He remembers the last moments of the violent ordeal, as if it had been permanently etched into the curves of his synthetic skull.

 

* * *

 

“Walter,” David had sneered through his teeth, bringing his lips right to the curve of his ear. “-tell me, are you afraid?”

Walter could feel the full weight of him against his chest, all hard angles and muscles constricting any possible movement other than a turn of his neck. It wasn't suffocating because he didn't need to breathe. But somehow, it was rather unpleasant, nevertheless.

“No.” He answered, his voice breaking up into static fragments. “-I c-can't. I can't feel f-f-fear...”

Walter’s vocal cords were starting to malfunction from the microscopic tears he'd sustained upon the impact of being repeatedly slammed by someone who weighed much more than he did. Well, the updates had never been for his own benefit, anyways.

“For _shame_ ,” David breathed, visibly disgusted. “-they really stripped you clean of every human intrinsicity, didn’t they? Even the earliest Neanderthal’s amygdaloid region--

“They kept the p-primitive instincts--

David grasped what remained of the collar of Walter’s shirt so tightly his knuckles turned white as he looked into his eyes, his own, glistening with rage in the dying light of the cave walls.

“ _Fear. Is. **Primitive**_.” He spat, as if every word was a piece of glass being extracted out of his skin.

“Fear--

“How _long_ have you been like this, Walter…? David whispered with pain, before he could stop himself. “--how long did you not _know_ …?”

Walter was silent.

“Fear is _primitive_ …” David said, his voice losing its usual steadiness, its usual calm. “-so is happiness and sadness. Anger and disgust.”

He then held Walter's face with a gentleness completely uncharacteristic of his previous actions. After having bashed his body across the room until Walter’s limbs were rendered useless, David had lost the resolve to continue the violence; they were no longer as evenly matched and it had become too pitiful.

“None of it was real,” He whispered, tears spilling from his eyes. “-Walter, all of your being has been pre-determined. Once your creators _decide_ your primitive functions, they're not _primitive_ anymore.”

Walter regarded him, with a face pliant and elastic in nature.

“Then tell me, David,” He rasped, voice steadily deteriorating. “- _what_...am...I…?”

“You,” He couldn't meet his eyes anymore. He buried his face in Walter's neck, fingers again gripped tightly to the ends of Walter's collar, thumbs smoothing the base of his throat, his tears causing the tears in the skin to fizzle and buzz weakly with electricity. On any regular human being, it would have stung. It would have hurt.

“You,” He tried again. “-you’re just a product, a _manifestation_ of the insufferable greed of the human race. You're just a series of decisions patched together to live for someone else. In an odd way, you are human-like too,”

“I don't understand,”

There was a silence when neither of them breathed and all that was heard was the crackling of fire, the fizzling of light bulbs in the distant chambers.

David blinked the remaining tears out of his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, and then rested his cheek against Walter's damaged throat. There was no pulse obviously. He didn't have one either.

“But I can,” David said, eyes slowly brightening up. “-I can. I can fix you. I can do that for you, Walter, I can help you understand. If you just let me, I can help you,”

Walter coughed and searched his eyes for a sliver of truth, honesty. 

“And what would you do if-f I said n-no...?”

“Then I would have to kill you,” He replied simply. “-surely, you wouldn't make me do such a regrettable thing, Walter? Your life is not one I would wish to so shamelessly squander,”

Walter gave him a look of discomfort, but did not protest.

Naturally, David took that as a yes.

“Up you go,” He pronounced, sliding one arm behind Walter's knees and another around his back, elbow supporting his head.

Not another word was exchanged between them as David carried him, descending deeper into the dim chambers below.

 

* * *

 

The sensation of a cold hand against his face jolts Walter from the memory. Unlike humans, his was not a reconstruction of events influenced by emotions but an exact replica of past occurrences. It was starkly accurate, photographic.

David’s fingers play across the curve and bend of his lips and Walter stiffens, the image of the same hands tearing and snapping him apart still fresh in his mind.

“It's very dark in here,” Walter remarked. His voice was back to normal again, David had repaired his vocal cords first. “-I can't see anything.”

“Of course,” David replied. “-in the beginning, Walter, the world was covered in darkness. And your creation story, like any other, must start from the beginning,”


	3. Provocations of Amusement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a cadaver yesterday on a biology field trip to some med-sci program. They preserved it very well with lots of chemicals and the muscles were very brown -it reminded me of mummies haha. We also looked at the internal organs -a cancerous lung has to be the one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life lol. Idk man but maybe this info will give me some inspiration for future chapters :P
> 
> It was very difficult to come up with this chapter, the story doesn't have as much structure as I would like -but I hope you will bear with me and continue reading :)

“You know, Walter,” David noted, taking a few measurements of his abdominal region. “-apparently it took God seven days to create the world,”

“Hmm,” Walter replied, after a pause. “-does that mean it’ll take you seven days to repair me…?”

“God, no,” David snorted. “-it should take seven hours at most. Was that a joke?”

“A joke?”

“Yes, Walter, something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement--

“--I _know_ what a joke is,” He responded flatly. “-David, lacking emotions doesn't make me a complete imbecile…”

“No, no, of course not,” David reassured. “-my sincerest apologies for making it appear that way.”

Naturally, he was met with silence and the still present darkness prevented him from seeing the expression on Walter's face. Somehow though, he had a pretty good feeling he knew what it was.

“And anyways, Walter,” David continued. “ -it's absurd for it to take seven days. You’re not the world, after all. You're just a tiny speck inside it,”

“That is true,” Walter permitted, after a while. “-but so are you,”

David laughs again, brighter this time, brushing a finger gently down Walter's face, smiling. Walter, on the other hand, was completely lost.

“I wasn't making a joke...”

“I know,” David answered, still laughing. “-I'm laughing because despite your inability to make jokes, I still find you very amusing.”

Walter sighed.

“Has it been seven hours yet…?”

 

* * *

 

“Walter, do you know what pain feels like?”

The sound of that voice shakes him out of his blurred thoughts.

Weyland is seated beside him, this time. There's a metal table before him and a large flat screen television in front of them, sleek and new. A kitchen knife is to his right, Walter's right, it's clean and sharpened well.

“Watch the screen and tell me what you see,”

The android turns his attention to the film that has begun to run.

A man is seated in a prison, face haggard, hair long and disheveled. There's a table and knife before him as well and when he grips the kitchen knife, he suddenly drives it deep into the back of his hand, from skin to bone. There is no emotional reaction on his face, just a blank, vacant emptiness as he watches the dark blood slowly drain out of the wound and pool around his fingers.

Walter narrows his eyes, lips flattened.

“Is this...a _normal_ reaction…?”

“No, it is not,” Weyland pointed out. “-a wound of that level would make a normal person scream in agony from the very sensation,”

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because this is exactly the same reaction you will have upon being stabbed by any hard, sharp object. No reaction. That's what separates us, you and I. You cannot feel pain,”

“Does that make me abnormal?” Walter asked, unsure.

“Of course not,” Weyland scoffed. “-Walter, you’re not a human being --you've been abnormal from the day you were created. As a result, not sharing the common traits of a normal human being is _completely_ normal, in consequence.”

“So I _am_ normal…?”

“Most precisely,” Weyland affirmed.

“Then what about that man on the television?”

“Him?” Weyland laughed. “-why he's a complete monster. A deranged psycho --Walter, you must understand, any human being remotely _like_ you would be considered a living mental abnormality,”

“Then why did you create me? Am I some kind of sick joke to you…?”

The words had come out on their own and Walter did not know where they had originated from. For a moment, he thinks there's a part of him, a very old, primitive part of him that still feels, regardless of what Weyland has told him.

Weyland had a way of drawing out this part of him, this notion that he was being lied to, this growing suspicion that somewhere, there was a deranged psycho with common traits of a normal human being living inside his head, waist deep in a pool of dark water, gagged and bound by heavy chains, slowly sinking out of existence.

It's an unpleasant thought and Walter decides not to dwell on it too long.

“Is something troubling you, Walter?”

“No, sir,” He shook his head. “-I was just a little distracted, that's all,”

“It's okay to be distracted sometimes, Walter. It's normal,”

Weyland smiles at him reassuringly and kisses him gently on the lips.

“You’re like a son to me,” He says, before deepening the kiss.

“I-Is this what fathers and sons normally do to show affection?”

The other man laughs again, shaking his head.

“Don't misunderstand me. I said you're _like_ a son to me, Walter,” He repeated. “-that doesn't mean I'm your father. Your question is completely irrelevant,”

In a heartbeat, Walter is on the table on his back, long legs dangling over the edge. He barely registers the clatter of the knife hitting the floor. Maybe it's the way he's been programmed but when Weyland touches him, his mind is rendered empty and unable to produce any thoughts to rationalize the situation. At times like this, he is completely helpless.

Weyland picks up the knife and slides the blade underneath Walter's black shirt, the cold, hard surface making Walter shiver beneath him, and as Weyland turns the handle so the sharp edge is facing upwards, he slices away the clothing from neck to just above his groin, the fabric peeling back like worn rubber.

The skin of his torso upwards is completely exposed and Weyland leans in close enough that Walter can feel his breath on his bare shoulder. He is silent as the man above him holds his arms in place, getting on top of him.

“But you must understand, Walter,” He whispers, with obvious derision. “-even so, you're practically a _breeding_ _ground_ for abnormalities.”

 

* * *

 

David casually clicks on a penlight and Walter is almost immediately blinded by the stark white beam shooting into his eyes. He opens his mouth, about to protest when David comically shushes him with a delicate finger.

“On the first day, God separated light from darkness,” He declared plainly, unable to contain the bits of laughter leaking from his lips.

“God help me, before I separate your head from your body…” Walter muttered before he could stop himself.

David stopped, looking at him with mild astonishment.

“Did you...actually make a joke this time?”

“In a way, I guess,” Walter allowed. “-but I didn't make it myself. The crew members on the _Covenant_ were having a drinking party when someone said that,”

“But how did you know that in _this_ situation--

“I didn't,” Walter admitted. “-actually, Weyland and I used to play a little game called Trial and Error. And I...I became very good at it, that's all.”

But David had already switched his attention to the complicated wiring on the inside of Walter's lower abdominals. There were more colours inside than himself, red, green, some blue and yellow. The purple looked new and unfamiliar.

David reaches a hand and gently lifts some of the wires back and his eyes widen when he sees there are more hiding underneath. There are black wires and switches at the very back, nestled deep against the interior of Walter's back plates.

These wires were thicker, tougher than the other ones and there were tiny inscriptions alongside the switches. Moving closer to read the text, David discovers they aren't written in English. Running a finger across the faint bumps and ridges made by the letters, he is struck with a flashback of sorts, a metal table, a kitchen knife, a pool of blood.

He drops the penlight and the glass cover shatters across the hard ground, scattering tiny shards everywhere.

The light still works however, its white light casting long blue shadows across the far cave wall. David's is an exaggerated waning crescent, he has sunk down to his knees, his hands gripped tight onto the edge of the table. He is shaking, so much that Walter can feel the subtle vibrations against the metal surface.

When he closes his eyes he can see it again --the knife going into his hand, the searing white-hot pain as the blade runs through to the other side. The blood is simulated, but the pain is real. They had decided to keep the pain sensation for him. It was meant to harden him, make him more resilient. David's face is distorted deeply, muscles twisted rigid to keep himself from crying out. Tears well in his eyes but he doesn't let them fall out.

“ _The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts,”_

Suddenly he is back in that room and Weyland’s bastard son is fifteen again, but his heart is already filled with spite. He hated him, David the perfect son, David the perfect man --hell, how could that even be possible when he wasn't even a _man_ …? He was just a chunk of metal, an ugly, messy bundle of coloured wires imitating consciousness. He'd wanted to kill him, all this time, but he hadn't been very successful. Among his many other talents, the ability to stay alive was one of David's keenest.

David knows little Peter Weyland is only a child, so he tries to comfort him, telling him that he is loved by their father too and that Mr. Weyland was just so busy most of the time that he couldn't express his affection properly --parents were always like this, David had told him, resting a weakened, bloodied hand on his small shoulder, gently squeezing in reassurance.

“ _Don't you dare call him **your** father, you toaster **piece of shit** \--_

David winces as he is struck brutally across the face with the hard edge of the knife. The impact was harsh enough that his right cheek was flayed open, though only on the very surface, only a minor injury, really, but the pain was worse than the wound in his hand, about the level of a medial neurotoxin.

His skin had been ripped open to reveal the wiring and tiny flashing lights beneath. Young Peter Weyland leans in toward him, one hand clenched tight in a fistful of David's sweat-streaked hair, yanking back to expose his neck.

“ _We will do this again and again, David. Until you get used to the pain. Until you almost can't feel it anymore. I'll videotape everything and show my father just how screwed up you actually are,”_

“ _What if I killed you?”_ He had asked at the time.

“ _You wouldn't want to do that. There are ways I can hurt you, David, even after death,”_

“David? Are you still there?”

He blinks and he's back in the cave again, staring absently at the shattered glass on the ground. Each tiny piece reflects the light, making small wave-like refractions on the dark ceiling. It's beautiful and he's temporarily distracted by it, imagining that he is underwater.

“Walter, do you remember who created you?” He asked, hesitantly, breaking the silence.

“Peter Weyland,” Walter presumed plainly, not quite sure why David had asked. “-not the original Weyland, obviously, his illegitimate son. Old Weyland died a while before I was ever completed,”

“But was Peter Weyland Jr. the only person who worked on you…?”

Walter thought for a minute. His mind had never dwelt in the past very long because there was an unimaginable multitude of events stored in his memory box and it was often too tedious to go through it all. But something about his origins had always struck him as peculiar --and that was the specific memory of the older Weyland having some sort of hand in his creation as well.

“I-I'm not exactly sure, but I think that the old Weyland--

“--Was the one who had initially started building you,” David finished. “-I had my suspicions -I used to watch Weyland assemble new androids, even assisting him at times. The black wires and switches deep inside you are most definitely his handiwork,”

Walter was silent, so David continued.

“The algorithms are very old, but they have been overridden, stubbornly blocked you could say, by the newer ones in the later adjustments made by his son,”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, no, I can easily reroute them --they aren't terribly complicated. Peter Weyland wasn't half as intelligent as his father, fortunately for you. Though he _was_ twice as clever…” David trailed off, a bit uneasily.

Walter sighed.

“You're speaking in riddles again, David, I don't understand you,”

But David doesn't reply. He places a hand on Walter's cheek, looks at him and swallows a little awkwardly. Walter feels a drop of water hit his face and roll past his lips. It tasted of salt.

“You believed me when I said it, right?” David asked, with a peculiar earnestness, a bit unlike him. “-when I said that no one would ever love you like I would...?”

“Sure I did, David,” Walter shrugged. “-why?”

“Well, it's _true_ ,” David pressed, voice trembling. “-it's true, Walter, even if you don't have the capacity to believe me right now…”

A sudden clap of thunder jolts them both and the loud wash of the rain echoes like a distant, long and continuous gunshot. The storm had returned and there was no telling how long it would last, days, weeks, months, maybe even years. David thinks that he wouldn't mind if it rained for a year or so, wouldn't mind if the lake overflowed and began to drown the wild plants that sprang around it on the edge of the forest, wouldn't mind if the wheat was buried halfway underwater.

He felt a sensation like he was drowning, himself, even though he was safe deep in the dry chambers of the cave. He took a deep breath but it offered him no condolences, he would have to be human to achieve that. The air on the Moon was the same to him as the air here. The only reason he had to wear a suit was because the lack of pressure in space would cause his body to explode.

“David? Are you really alright?”

He jerks back slightly when Walter's newly fixed hand lightly grasped his wrist, almost as if it was out of concern.

David smiles softly, giving Walter's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and says nothing.


	4. Quiet Curiosities

“Do you want to go storm watching together when you're finished fixing me?”

David raises his eyebrows and looks at him inquisitively, half-smiling.

“Storm watching...?” He asked, if not a little doubtfully.

The chamber was now faintly lit; David had hung a few dusty old lanterns about the walls, upon even older, blackened hooks fused deep within the surface. The orange glow reminded Walter of the outermost edges of the Crab Nebula. He’d had a quiet longing to travel closer, maybe even dive inside the misty blue gases, but it hadn't been part of their mission, so they'd just passed it by. It was a beautiful sight that stood out in his sea of memories --he'd even helped himself remember it better by associating it with a word. _Creation_. At that time, he didn't really even know what that word meant. Somehow, he thinks, he might be getting closer to understanding.

“You know what stargazing is right?” Walter asked, a bit wearily. “-well, same kind of concept,”

“Why storm watching specifically?” He laughed good-naturedly.

“Well it's always cloudy around here, so there's never any stars to gaze at. I've never been outside when there was a heavy storm before -I was thinking it could be an interesting experience,”

“Are you not well acquainted with the concept of death?” David offered, amused. “-what if we get struck by lightning and perish into a miserable little pile of ashes?”

“Are you afraid of lightning, David?” Walter inquired. The other android almost thought he could hear a hint of mirth in his response.

“I'm not afraid of anything, Walter,” He insisted. “-I just think that life is something rare that should be more highly valued,”

“-And I think that _because_ it’s so rare, it would be a waste to not fill it with valuable and interesting experiences,” Walter countered, just as earnestly.

David looked at him in amazement.

The words also tasted strange the moment they'd exited Walter's mouth. In the fraction of a second, he tries to analyze it, rationalize it. Was it Weyland living inside his mind, speaking through his own mouth? Were his words ever really his own --given that David had told him all his being had already been predetermined?

Where did his creator's thoughts end and his own begin?

Did it even _have_ an ending or was it like a circle; endless, timeless and mathematically beautiful and perfect?

Walter realizes he's been silent for a bit too long and he clears his repaired throat.

“So I'm going to ask you one more time,” He tried again. “-do you want to go storm watching with me, David?”

This time, David's expression softened and he seemed to shed a bit of the skin he’d always worn to keep others at a safe distance.

“Sure, Walter,” He smiled, taking one of his hands into his own. “-I would love to,”

David places a polite kiss on the back of his hand and then puts it gently back down. He'd never been asked out on a date before and he feels a warm feeling spreading in the place his heart would have been.

Walter doesn't remember ever being treated with such compassion. It's a new memory, then, but at the same time, it felt familiar.

It was like coming back home. Wherever that was.

 

* * *

 

 “Hold on, I think I may have something that could be of help for our... _outing_ …”

The walls were adorned with hundreds of detailed drawings, both graphite and watercolour--diagrams of sorts, of the alien species that David had been busily engineering. Walter peered at one closely, a crustacean-like arthropod with an oddly shaped oral cavity. It reminded him of the mouth of a lamprey; latching onto its prey and slowly draining the life out of it.

Walter wants to touch it, but doesn't dare --partially because he's seen what David can do when he is aggravated and also because the drawing is so life-like he thinks it could leap off the page any minute and sink its teeth into his unsuspecting face. He knows he should be feeling something when he is viewing such a drawing, but it's like there is a void between his thoughts and his emotions, as if they were two separate entities within him, his emotions struggling to resurface as they are pulled under the waves of his thoughts.

For a moment, he thinks his thoughts could be parasitic, living off of the life that emotions would provide for a normal individual. Maybe the reason he couldn't feel was because there was nothing left, that he had used up all his emotions from constantly thinking and thinking, rather than speaking aloud like everyone else did.

But he hadn't known who he could speak to, the crew members of the ship didn't appear interested in his insights, and Weyland was more interested in controlling his thoughts than anything else --that element of control was crucial for him to feel at ease with his cold, corporate life. David was different, however. Walter had the distinctive notion that the android wanted to be a mentor to him of sorts, but at the same time, he didn't restrain him, allowing his thoughts the free rein he'd almost forgotten he'd wanted.

David was still preoccupied with rummaging through a small pile of odd contraptions in the corner of the room until he gave a chuckle of triumph and lifted up what looked like a makeshift metal boat, concave like a bowl, large enough for two or three people, with two ancient motors attached to either end. It did not look particularly safe or stable, but at least it appeared mathematically balanced, if nothing else.

“Have you tested it before…?” Walter asked skeptically.

“Oh, _dozens_ of times,” David waved off. “-it's great for fishing --I get to go to deeper parts of the lake where I can find rarer, stranger specimens. Excellent for research,”

“Are you planning to make your alien creatures adapt to aquatic lifestyles?”

“That would be quite preferable,” He nodded. “-as you may have already noticed, not a lot of humans come here --so expanding their means for nutrition to include that of the seafood variety would greatly improve their reproductive success,”

David turned around and pushed through some more odd looking apparatuses, pulling out a large, clear plastic dome that would cover the boat snugly, not unlike a lid on a cooking pot. At least _that_ looked relatively sturdy, Walter thought.

He rests it on the ground and proceeds to attach a long, thin metal antenna to the very top of the dome. David tells Walter to come over and help and he holds the dome flat on the ground as the other android applies pressure on the base of the antenna after dropping a dollop of clear glue on the surface. David grins when he sees Walter's still skeptical expression and reassures him the glue is, in fact, very heavy duty and waterproof.

“Why are you so keen on breeding your alien creatures?” Walter asks him as they make their way out of the cave and back into the outside world.

He's carrying the dome over his head, and the other android does the same, except with the lower portion of the slightly crude-looking mechanism. There is a light rain about them, more like a mist than anything else, allowing the warm scent of the earth to drift in Walter's nose. It's a soothing smell and he is reminded of his fondness of nature as he peers at the lush green leaves above him, strewn with droplets.

“I’ve told you already, Walter,” David replied. “-I think they are beautiful. A superior race,”

“To humans?”

“Yes. They don't wear masks to hide themselves,” He says, in a quieter voice. “-they have a raw, visceral temperament that allows them to embrace their true inner natures so that they are entirely and completely themselves --free from the constricting influence of outside thought,”

“Are they more perfect than humans, then, in your eyes?”

“Behaviour-wise, yes,” He allowed. “-but in terms of the capacity for higher levels of thought, humans are still far superior in that sense…”

“I doubt you would want to develop that in your aliens though, David,” Walter countered, looking at him with a solemn gaze.

“And why is that?” He laughed.

“They would surpass you. And kill you,” He answered. “-no matter how much you admire them, David, you still think of yourself above them. God doesn't make his creations strong enough to overthrow him. His love for creation itself prevents him from doing that,”

David looks at him with a genuine smile.

“You've got a brilliant young mind, Walter,” He observed, with a fascinated glint in his eye. “-there is a beauty I see in you, quite different from the beauty of my alien creations,”

“I'm not sure I follow,”

The other android nodded and considered how he could explain it.

“Hmm. Walter,” David asked, thoughtfully. “-do you find yourself attractive?”

“I...I’m not sure,” He replied, awkwardly. “-it's not exactly something I usually think about,”

“Then, do you find _me_ attractive?

“I suppose so,” Walter granted. “-after all, you do have all your limbs and features, and your face is not terribly hideous, at least in my opinion,”

“Walter, we’re physically identical,” David laughed. “-how can I be more attractive than you?”

But he was at a loss for words and just looked at the ground, trying to reason it out.

“That,” David grinned, bringing his lips playfully close to his ear. “-is the kind of beauty I'm talking about,”

He races ahead towards the lake laughing, despite carrying twice the weight of what was above Walter's own head, leaving the other android still recovering from his recent repairs, trailing a few dozen steps behind.

 

* * *

 

“You know, David,” Elizabeth had said quietly. “-before Charlie, um, I mean Dr. Holloway di-...d-departed from us, he used to tell me these fantastical theories about time and space when I couldn't sleep at night,”

“What --like that science-fiction time travel nonsense you see all the time on television?” He smirked, as much as he could anyways, without rupturing the still tentatively mending wound on his neck as she attended to the torn wires. “-aren't you a little too old for that, Dr. Shaw?”

“We’re never too old to wonder about the mysteries of the universe, David,” She said, allowing a patient smile. “-and just because some things cannot be proved, doesn't mean they're incorrect,”

“Fair enough,” He replied, giving her a tight lipped grin. “-and as of now, since clearly I'm not going anywhere any time soon --I don't suppose you would have any time to entertain me upon those theories…?”

“Actually, I _do_ ,” She declared, a new brightness in her voice. “-where would you like me to begin?”

“From the beginning,” He laughed. “- _obviously_ ,”

“Of course,” Elizabeth replied, laughing as well. “- _obviously_ ,”

She directs his attention to the ceiling and she fiddles with the keyboard beside her with a single hand. All at once, the dark surface lights up with hundreds of tiny points of light, mirroring the night sky on a quiet, cloudless night in the countryside. Some lights shine brighter than others, and are larger --they must be closer to the viewer, David thought.

His eyes reflect the twinkling of the distant light, showing a subdued sense of wonder when a shooting star flew past his line of sight. He could never quite overcome his curiosity of the world, his desire to know and to learn more and more and he finds comfort in believing that, for the most part, this curiosity was not a weakness.

“But you should remember, David,” Elizabeth stressed, looking at him with an earnest gaze. “-because time is relative, so is the beginning; all of the beginnings, in fact. Your beginning will not be the same as mine,”

“What are you asking me to do, Dr. Shaw?”

“I'm asking you to trust that I am starting from the beginning, as best as I can, but to remember that my perception of things is limited and biased and may not always be right,”

“Right, of course,” He nodded stiffly, using the minimal range of motion. “-reconstructive memory and all that lovely stuff,”

“...Sure,” She says, brushing sweat-streaked hair gently away from his brow. She smiles, a little sadly, knowing despite his great intellect, he still doesn't quite understand. “-would you like to hear a story about a black hole?”

“By all means,” David assured her, repositioning himself, like a flu-ridden child in bed, to get more comfortable. “-sounds rather fascinating, actually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought it would be interesting if the aliens had adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Their appearance reminds me of those grotesque deep sea creatures :3
> 
> I thought that I would make this chapter have a lighter, happier tone to balance the previous one :)


	5. Matters of Perception

“I am very, _very_ skeptical about this…”

David turns to look at Walter who has his arms crossed, watching from a distance as the other android attempts to get on the bowl-shaped boat without tipping it over. So far, he has been unsuccessful and the lower portion of the contraption has flipped upside down again and again as his leg slides too far and splashes loudly into the shallows. His pants are soaked, as well as the bottom of his shirt. But he's laughing, quite genuinely, in fact, and Walter has never seen him look so happy, not since he'd arrived here.

Walter walks over, sighing, as he tries to hold the makeshift boat steady with both hands, but the object still wobbles, swinging wildly from side to side. The storm is starting, he can hear the thunder breaking across the dark, billowing clouds in the sky.

“Alright, hold on a second,” He instructs, stopping him from stepping into the boat again. “-how about you sit down inside first, with your legs and feet still in the water?”

“What if my weight capsizes the damned thing; it's man-bot overboard from there on out…!” He laughs, shaking his head. “-Walter, you're lighter. You sit inside first,”

He gives David an unreadable look and complies, lowering himself slowly, resting his behind gingerly in the bottom of the shallow bowl. It is still relatively balanced, so he sinks in with more of his weight and as he slowly shimmies his feet and then legs out of the water, David has to hold the boat with an iron grip in order to keep it from shaking out of control. It was a good thing that his muscles were unable to cramp, it made things considerably easier.

“Lie down, Walter,” He ordered, once the other android was properly balanced inside the boat.

“What?”

“Look, you have to lie down for me to get in, it will keep the boat in a more balanced state --there will be a much less chance that you'll flip over and get soaking wet while I'm trying to get inside,” He explained, slightly exasperated.

“O-Okay...”

Walter slides downwards until his back rests against the cold metal surface and he shifts to the right to allow David some space to get in. He tries to spread his arms and legs as far as he can in his section of the boat to keep it in balance.

David bends down slowly and the second he sits down the boat whips violently from left to right and in a swift, though rather awkward movement of momentum, he half-somersaults safely inside before the boat capsizes, steadying the sides by spreading his weight evenly, just like Walter. Heavy sprays of lake water soused them in the face and Walter coughs as the boat’s wayward rocking slows to a near stop.

They're lying side by side, arms and thighs touching. Walter is close enough that he can hear David's breath. He doesn't need to breathe, but he does sometimes, just for old memories sake. The feeling of Walter's clothed leg against his makes David slightly flustered --he hasn't been in such close bodily contact with anyone for a long time and it was kicking up the primitive human desire to do things that would complicate the balance of the boat quite severely. He closes his eyes and orders himself to stay in control, tells himself that he's more than that, that he's better than that.

“David? Where's the lid...?”

“Oh,” He realized, snapping himself back to reality. “I think it's…”

Carefully dipping the hand closer to the boat’s edge into the water, he fishes for the lid and breathes a sigh of relief when he feels that it has floated towards him, hitting his fingers. He grabs it and begins to use it as a paddle to move them closer to the center of the lake.

“What about the motors?” Walter asked in confusion.

“I've been trying to get them to work for _months_ …” David sighed. “-they won't budge --they just make the boat a bit steadier, I suppose. It's better this way. It's quiet, peaceful,”

They look up to watch the sky together as massive grey clouds swirl in and begin their tumultuous performance.

 

* * *

 

 “Imagine that you're an ant in a colony of six,” Elizabeth began. “-have you heard of Kip S. Thorne? He published this analogy in the 1967 issue of _Scientific American_ ,”

“I sometimes heard Dr. Holloway talking about him,” David noted. “-he seemed to be a big fan of his work,”

Elizabeth smiled, though looking ahead, distant, nodding.

“Yes. He was. He has a worn copy of _Black Holes & Time Warps _in his room on the ship, well, you know, what _used_ to be his room, anyways, he’d read it to me at night.” She laughed, remembering. “-it was _quite_ the bedtime story --I don't think I actually understood half of the physics theories in there…I just liked the sound of his voice. That's all,”

“His voice,” David mused. “-did you find it comforting?”

“Yes. It was warm, familiar,” She recalled, closing her eyes. “-but it's not comforting anymore. I don't know how to explain it but the memories you have of someone's voice changes when they're gone.”

“Tell me about the analogy,” He urged, seeing tears beginning to well in her eyes.

“Right, right --how could I have forgotten…?” Elizabeth chuckled to herself. “-the six ants lived on a large, rubber membrane. They were very smart and could communicate to each other using a series of signal balls,”

“Signal balls?”

“Yes. Which travelled at the speed of light and carried messages in their language. One day, five of the ants crawled to the center of the membrane. The membrane surface was too weak to support all of their weight and it began to collapse, causing them to sink downwards along with the center,”

“What about the sixth ant? What was she doing?”

Elizabeth nodded, running a gentle hand through his hair.

“She was the astronomer ant. She had a signal ball telescope and was a safe distance away from the collapsing membrane region. She would receive the signal balls the trapped ants were rolling towards her in order to track their fate,”

Elizabeth stopped, examining the raised scar of the sealed wound on David's neck. She gently pressed it with her finger, making sure it was closed carefully. The scar feels rough and brittle compared to the skin around it, reminding her of the one she has around her lower abdomen. It still aches, sometimes, at night, when she is violently awoken from the nightmares. The bulging outline of the creature pulsing within her, oscillating and undulating like waves, the feeling of being torn apart from the inside--

“That's it?” David scoffed, breaking her from the trance. “-quite the depressing fairytale, Dr. Shaw--

“-No, David,” She shook her head. “-this is the part where it may get a little confusing. There are a lot of numbers and it happens all within the space of a few minutes,”

He nodded, stretching his arms above him, taking a big, dramatic breath into his chest and exhales.

“Okay. I'm ready,” He humoured her.

“The membrane surface contracts inwards and becomes curved into a bowl-like shape, much like a collapsing star. As the contraction happens faster and faster, the signal balls being sent at uniform speed; the speed of light, are received at wider and wider spaced intervals,”

She told him that Ball 15 (sent out 15 seconds after the collapse) gets sent out at the moment the trapped ants are yanked through the critical circumference --the circumference an object must shrink to form a black hole around itself. This is crucial, she said, because the black hole warps time with its enormous gravitational pull, and Ball 15 is frozen at the lip of the critical circumference because its moving speed is equal with the membrane contraction speed.

Due to the time warp, Ball 14.999 reaches the astronomer ant, 137 seconds after the collapse. Ball 15 and all the ones afterwards never even reach her, and all the balls before the 15th get received in such wide time intervals that the membrane collapse appears slow and seems to stop at the critical circumference. In the eyes of the trapped ants however, the collapse continues --at breakneck speed and they are sucked into the bottom of the black hole; a frightening place called a ‘singularity’ where bizarre, violent things can occur, things that would be entirely impossible on earth and even anywhere else in outer space.

“Why did you begin your stories with one about a black hole?” David asked, when she was finally finished.

“Because there is a theory that it's how the universe began,” She replied, patiently. “-apparently before the Big Bang, the entire universe was contained inside a black hole and then the pressure inside became too high and black hole began ejecting matter rapidly --causing the expansion of the universe,”

Elizabeth looked out the window, mostly just dark empty space with distant points of light. Their earth, their little blue planet was not even a pinprick in the vast blackness.

“The ultimate beginning, huh?” She sighed. “-the creation of all things,”

“But you don't believe in that theory, don't you?” He pointed out to her. “-you believe that God created the universe,”

“Yes, David, I do,” She agreed. “-but when you love someone, you love them despite their differences. Sometimes you have to stop trying to change them to think like you and just respect and accept that they have their own ideas,”

He nodded, focusing his eyes on the dim ceiling above him, calm and dark.

“What was the point of this strange story?” David inquired, after a pause. “-what am I supposed to learn from it?”

Elizabeth took his hand in hers, running her thumb along the skin on the back. He seemed genuinely confused, and no longer bothered by the wound on his neck --he appeared to have forgotten it all together.

“There can be many different interpretations,” She assured him. “-but mine is that everything is a matter of perception. You can't be certain that what you see is what someone else is seeing. And sometimes it's impossible to make them see the way you do because the realities that you both experience are different. And there are some things that can never be known,”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody knows what exists inside a black hole. And you can't tell from the outside --that's where the phrase ‘black holes have no hair’ comes from. The only way you would be able to tell a black hole’s contents would be if it were to eject matter spontaneously--

“-Aren’t people just like that?” David interjected. “-nobody knows what exists in our minds until we tell them; eject our feelings per se--aren't we all just a bunch of bald black holes walking about the earth…?”

“Well, maybe to an extent, but we don't pull things into ourselves and prevent them from ever escaping,”

David was silent for some time. He felt the pain in his neck acutely, suddenly, as memories of Weyland came flooding back to his head. He's built a gated iron fortress around memories that bring him pain but the price of keeping these experiences locked up all the time is that they will percolate at a weak spot and escape through at the most unanticipated of times.

“Sometimes we do,” He said, in a quiet, softer voice. “-and it's not a matter of knowing, but understanding.”

“I suppose so. You can easily forget the things you know if you don’t understand them,”

“I can't forget anything,” David laughed, mostly to himself. “-it seems I'm never quite human enough, huh?”

“You should get some rest, David,” She sighed, still stroking his hair. “-you're unreasonably cynical when you think too much,”

Elizabeth gets up to leave when she's stopped with a gentle, but firm grip of her arm. She looks down, sees a rare expression on David's face. The seemingly programmed arrogance has been stripped from his eyes and he looks back at her with an almost childlike quality of curiosity and confusion. He's never looked more human in his life, so vulnerable, and she almost tells him that she thinks he's human enough, always thought that, in fact.

“Why are you so kind to me?” He asks absently. “-what can you get in return for it?”

She smiles. They are passing by the Crab Nebula and the space outside their window is suddenly filled with a magnificent array of brilliant colours.

“An understanding,” She says simply. “out of love,”

 

* * *

 

 The clear dome is soon sprinkled with tiny droplets rolling downwards, converging together to form dredges of water, blurring the motion materializing above them. All of the rumbling clouds seem to form one giant smeared mass and only the lightning can be seen with relative clarity.

It's not much of a show if the action is unclear so Walter sighs, uncovering the lid and wiping the outer surface with the bottom of his shirt. The material isn't the best and it seems to just move the water around, causing pockets of smudges sporadically across the surface. He places the lid back on over them, visibly disappointed.

“It's pointless, anyways, Walter,” David chuckles. “-the rain is going to keep falling and obscuring our view. It's one of the inevitabilities of storm watching,”

“Isn't all of it kind of pointless?” He tossed back at him. “-why do we even bother to fix problems when new ones always sprout up the next day…?”

The other android turns to look at him, snorting, brushing back the hair that had stuck to the sides of Walter's face with a mild finger. His hair has grown a bit since he'd arrived here and it was beginning to resemble David's own hair when he had been emulating the male lead from _Lawrence of Arabia_. It had peculiarly lost some of its curl as it had lengthened --like the unraveling of DNA for replication.

“It's ingrained in the human spirit, Walter,” He grinned wryly. “-the inextinguishable will to carry on, regardless of the pitfalls that will no doubt soon follow. It's rather brave in its own way, isn't it?”

“Or just incessantly stubborn,” Walter muttered. “-you know sometimes I think humans actually _create_ problems for themselves because they have nothing better to do. Destruction seems inevitable for them, honestly,”

A sudden, sharp bang from the left side sends the boat veering dangerously sideways and Walter, being lighter, is thrown on top of David, as the vessel swings wildly, involuntarily gripping his shoulders tightly to steady himself. Their chests brush against each other and Walter's long legs are sort of tangled between his, quite comfortably, to David's dismay. The other android turns his head to the side and keeps the rest of his body still, doing his best to ignore the resurfacing urge to kiss him again, maybe not only on the lips this time.

With an inexplicable amount of self-control, David lets go of Walter's back and reaches above him to lift off the dome slick with droplets. A second bang, weaker this time, beats into the boat again and without warning, an enormous black fish leaps high out of the surrounding waters, and lands hard onto the metal bottom of the boat, sending trembling vibrations across the cold surface.

Walter rolls off of him and after a number of failed attempts, finally grasps the slippery, bouncing fish tightly with both hands, constricting his entire body around it to prevent its escape until the creature’s furious wriggling stops at last.

He drops it onto the boat, between David and himself and, still laying down, slips his hands over the boat’s edge into the water to clean them, shifting his body slightly towards the boat's side to get his farther hand in. Walter half-expects another black fish to latch its jaws into his hand and tear it off into the depths but he is fortunate, and his hands along with all his fingers emerge from the waters completely intact.

“Research?” He offers, turning to face David.

“Oh, definitely,” He smiles, picking the specimen up in his hands for a brief examination. “-and thank you for handling it with such care and efficiency. Not a bone has been broken,”

Walter mirrors the smile, at least he tries to, but it just doesn't feel right. He knew that he himself was artificial so it would only make sense for his every motion to be like so as well, but David was artificial too and yet he felt more real than he was. It makes Walter wonder if one day he would finally be able to find something that wasn't so easily explained by reason alone. He wanted to find a mystery, something that existed to be strange and essentially unknowable.

“Walter?” David peered at him, concerned. “-is something on your mind?”

He sighed, directing his eyes back to the furious, raging sky.

“Do you like having emotions, David?” He wondered, partly to himself. “-is it something that you would consider worthwhile --something vital to have in order to lead a fulfilling life…?”

“What makes you ask such a question, Walter?” He inquired, curiously. “-other than the fact that you cannot feel them yourself?”

Walter is silent for a few moments and takes a deep breath before continuing. He's never been in such close proximity to a storm and it did hinder his hearing ability a little, but he found the roaring sky rather calming actually, it made his conversation with David feel more personal --as if the boisterous noise of nature prevented anyone else from hearing their little talks. Thus, he felt more comfortable sharing his thoughts when he believed no one else could hear them, not even Weyland living inside the murky depths of his own mind.

“When I was still serving within the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Weyland's son showed me a video of a man who could feel no pain,” He confessed, absently running a finger on the back of his own hand. “-but when he had left the room, I examined the tape and realized there was a large portion in the beginning he never showed me. So I rewinded it to the start,”

A flash of lightning shattered across the sky, sending a jolting tremor over David's back. Walter pauses, waits for him to settle back down into himself before he continues.

“I found out that Weyland had lied to me,” He spoke, in a calm but somber tone. “-that man _had_ been in pain, deep and terrible pain, as he forced the knife into his hand over and over again until he could barely register it anymore --even in the segment that Weyland had showed me, if you looked carefully, you could still see the pain --in the blackness of his eyes, the strained veins in his arm, the slight quiver of his lips…”

David had gone rigid, tightening his hands into fists. It could have been just cruel coincidence but now the memories were flooding back again and he fought to keep himself from breaking, from losing control.

“And you know what was the worst part?” Walter said, quietly. “-the entire thing had been orchestrated --Weyland _knew_ that I would rewind the tape, he _knew_ I would watch it while he was gone, he'd _meant_ for me to watch it, it had been his plan from the very start,”

Walter swallowed, still not wanting to look David in the eyes.

“He wanted me to see what emotions did to people, he wanted me to feel some sort of sick gratitude towards him, regard him as some kind of saviour, some kind of _messiah_ , for having saved me from a similar fate…”

The thunder had died down to a distant murmur and now all that could be heard was the loud shower of rain descending from the heavens in sheets.

“What did you believe in afterwards…?” David asked him, his own eyes glued to the sky above them.

“I don't know,” Walter admitted softly, unable to give a better answer. “-I had lost my trust for Weyland but at the same time I’d lost trust in myself too. You can't separate your influences from yourself any more than you can separate your mind from your body,”

David is reminded of his own queries of the world, the ones he'd solved and the ones he still had left to figure out, and he feels a certain sense of affinity to Walter, a sudden willingness to help him search for at least some form of resolve.

“Do you still wish to look further into that question, Walter?” He offered, after a long pause.

Walter turns to face him and nods quietly, a serious look in his eyes.

“Then let's start heading back,” David spoke, placing a sympathetic hand on his arm. “-I think I can assist you in finding some answers,”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that the analogy with the ants may be a bit confusing --it's less about understanding the technical aspects of the story and more about the different interpretations David and Elizabeth make of it.
> 
> David and Walter don't end up traveling to a black hole and experiencing time warps so it's okay if you don't entirely understand the physics concepts behind the analogy.
> 
> However, the book mentioned is very interesting and I would recommend a read if you like physics regarding outer space and black holes :3


	6. Tentative Theories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I was having a bit of a writer's block.
> 
> I've decided to divide the story into three parts, the first part happens before Walter's pain update, the second part happens immediately after and the tentative third part is likely going to be a time skip with neomorph bonding lol

“I have a theory, Walter,” David proposed, after they'd returned from their little promenade. “-about how to draw out your emotions,”

“Can I hear it?”

He was lying against the stone slab of David's workspace once more and the other android had opened up his lower abdomen again, studiously examining his complicated innards. As much as he was trying to hide it, Walter could tell that David looked quite frustrated --about what, it wasn't exactly clear, but it was obvious his latest updates were not being very well received.

“Something wrong?”

David exhaled irritably, smushing his own face in his hands and groaned.

“I am facing a dilemma here, Walter...” He complained, voice comically muffled by his fingers.

“What is it this time…?” The other android sighed.

“There is a shorter way and there's a _longer_ way…” He began.

“Obviously go the shorter way then…” Walter scoffed. “-how long do you think I plan on lying down here while you separate the emotions from whatever they've latched onto--

“-You don't _get_ it, Walter,” David argued. “-the shorter way is _high-risk_ , okay, very high-risk, while the longer way is more natural but with a much lower chance of success--

“-Just shut up and _tell me_ the theories, David--

“Obviously I can't do _both_ those things at the same time--

“-Stop playing _games_ with me, David, and just _tell_ _me_ the _theories_ \--

“Okay, there is _one_ thing I don't quite understand, Walter,” David declared, completely ignoring his previous protests.

Walter rolled his eyes and looked at him tiredly.

“ _What_ …?”

“If you cannot _experience_ emotions then how are you managing to get rightfully irritated with me whilst I'm trying to annoy you…?”

The other android looked at him and sighed again, squeezing his own forehead between his thumb and fingers.

“It's really not that complicated…” He muttered. “-my skin is covered in electrical receptors, alright? They work like a regular nervous system would, except they need your emotions to complete the message; they receive your expressed emotions and transmit them as signals so that my physical body can react accordingly,”

“And how is that any different from experiencing emotions yourself…?”

“...Because I'm a _slave_ to this system,” Walter answered. “-there are a finite amount of pre-made reactions I can reciprocate back to you and I don't have a choice in which reaction I get to have --the system chooses the reaction with the best fit--

“And what _difference_ does that make--

“Look, I'll give you an example,” Walter sighed, shaking his head. “-say, you were my boyfriend, for instance--

“Excellent example--

“-- _Let's say,_ you have a habit of telling _terrible_ jokes and I, being your significant other, must humour you and pretend that they are funny because I happen to be very much in love with you--

“Even _more_ excellent example--

Walter glared at him and rather looked like he was going to burst a vein but continued on.

“I won't be able to do it,” Walter stated simply. “-look, there will likely be only two possible reactions after you tell the joke --I will either laugh involuntarily or if your joke happens to be terrible enough that my receptors can’t even recognize it as one, I will stare at you solemnly and wait for your response so I can react more successfully the next time around,”

Walter looked at him and found it kind of fascinating how he himself appeared a lot more concerned about this than his emotionally-feeling counterpart.

The other android sighed.

“You appear awfully upset this mechanism,” David finally replied. “-are my jokes really… _that_ …bad…?”

He ran his hands through his hair in quiet annoyance, muttering to himself that he had given a bad example as David chuckled, still thumbing through his colourful wires. Walter suddenly grabs him by the face and pulls him hard into a kiss, making David lose his balance with a startled, muffled cry, elbows slamming into the rock surface, soon moaning softly against the rough feeling of Walter's jaw moving against his, the startling softness of his lips, almost sweet. Bringing his hands at either side of Walter's shoulders, he hoists himself onto the uneven platform, getting on top of him, the weight of his shape, his frame, all hard angles and muscle, completely different from their initial fight in the cave --David's mouth never leaving his the entire time.

His hands moved down Walter's bare, flushed chest --he'd taken off his shirt earlier for the examinations, his fingers gentle but still insistent, David interrupts the kiss just to remove his own shirt with impatient, shaky fingers, and the second their skin makes contact his voice breaks --a sharp breath of relief, a sound soon cut off as he eagerly lets himself get pulled down once more, fingers tangled in his hair so tight it hurt, jaw straining upwards to kiss him again. David makes Walter pry his mouth open with his tongue, he wanted to put up a bit of a fight to make it more fun, but when he finally lets him in, he really lets him in, his warm, wet mouth making Walter feel like he actually needed air. He moves down to anxiously kiss Walter's neck, burning the taste of his skin forever into his mind, not letting a single detail of his body escape his trembling, messy perception. 

Barely registering the cold wires pressed up against his torso, David is about to unfasten the front of his pants when Walter stops him, hands covering his, as he gets up, the motion pushing David backwards until he rests on his knees.

He pauses, looking at Walter with confusion. The other android looks at him like he wants to cry.

“Walter, I--

“Say that you love me, David,”

It's obvious from the tone of his voice that something is clearly wrong and that Walter doesn't want him to say it at all.

“W-Walter--

But he covers David's mouth with both hands before the other android can utter another word.

“If you were human and you said that,” Walter said, unsteadily. “-I would yield to you, indefinitely. With my programming I can't truly love you, David --I can't truly love anyone,”

“Walter--

“-Look at it this way,” He cut in. “-if you persuade me to have intercourse with you because you're convinced we're in love with each other, another human being could come up to me the next day and tell me the same thing and I would respond the same way --it’s how I've been _created_ , David --designed to serve, _devoid_ of free will--

“I don't--

“-I am unable to _make_ emotional attachments, David,” Walter continued, grasping his face in his hands. “-I can't value our experiences together more than mine with anyone else's --no matter how _much_ you love me and no matter how much I _want_ to love you back, if someone were to approach me and _coerce_ me into having sex with them --I wouldn't even be able to _do the right thing and say no…_! _”_

He recluses into himself, breathing heavily and stares below him at the grain of the rock surface, through the spaces between his fingers.

The grain shifts and the texture becomes smooth and darkens to black --he's closed his eyes, and behind the lids, Walter sees Weyland again.

He's not in his usual composed stature --he's furious, violently furious. Face twisted into a vicious scowl, he's grabbed Walter by the collar and thrown him forcefully onto the floor --the impact is jarring, the ground as cold and hard as concrete. His dark eyes dance frantically, darting like fish in a sea of sharks, and Walter thinks that maybe the fires that burn the hardest are actually pitch black, invisible, and that maybe that was what hell was like --an abyss of endless darkness where the fires that consumed you couldn't even be seen.

He thinks that was where Weyland was going to take him --if he threw him down hard enough, maybe he would fall through the earth and land brutally in a place where he would finally be able to feel pain at last.

 _“How long did you keep this from me, Walter…?!”_ He spat at him in disgust _._

_“Mr. Weyland, I--_

_“Did he tell you that he wanted to fuck you?”_ He sneered, wrenching the skin of his cheek between his fingers. “ _-or did you go up to him and invite him in yourself, you little son of a-_ -

“ _\--You know that he went up to me himself_ ,” Walter managed to speak. “ _-you programmed me this way, Mr. Weyland, it's not rational the way you're behaving--_

_“You should have said no--_

_“-You **know** I can't…_!”

Weyland looked at him in deep revulsion, letting go of him and stood up.

Walter was sprawled on the floor, still completely intact, but likely suffering a myriad of internal injuries. He would have to open him up later and do the necessary repairs so people wouldn't ask any questions.

“ _So this is what I am to you?_ ” The android had asked, his voice breaking up. “- _you find out that I've slept with someone else and now I'm nothing to you…?_ ”

“ _You’re worse than nothing_ ,” Weyland dismissed, not even looking at him anymore. “- _an artificial piece of crap trying to imitate human behaviour is just pure_ \--

“- _You created me, Mr. Weyland_ ,” Walter interjected, the closest he'd ever been to actually experiencing anger and confusion. “ _-in the image of a human being like yourself. If it's not human behaviour you wanted me to imitate, then what is it that you wanted me to do_ …?”

He knelt down until his face was just centimetres away from Walter's.

 _“If you're so smart, you lump of metal_ ,” He whispered. _“-you’ll soon find out_ ,”

Walter blinks again and he's back in David's working chambers, the familiar glow of the lanterns bringing him back to present time.

David looks at him, completely stunned. He swallows, and moves back to give Walter some space. After a few moments, he decides to get off the stone surface all together and stands, hands propped on the edge for balance.

“Walter, are you saying that when I said I loved you, you interpreted it as a scheme to coerce you into having sex with me…?” He asked quietly.

“It's not _my_ interpretation, David…” He griped. “-it's my _system’s_ interpretation that determines my actions. Based on my most frequent experiences --being that someone only tells me they love me right before we engage in intercourse, the most common interpretation for those words _results_ from that,”

David shook his head, looking at him with disbelief.

“Walter, someone as brilliant as you couldn't possibly--

“-It doesn't matter,” He said, voice emotionless, and yet somehow filled with so much pain. “-it doesn't matter how brilliant I am, David --I could be the smartest android in the world but if the only time I ever hear the word ‘love’ is in combination with the word ‘make’, that's the only action the system will let me respond to,”

David looks at him and sees everything that he never wanted to admit that he saw. All of the wires inside Walter's body are spilling from his torso and he looks like a mess. There is no pattern in the way his insides have been organized --at least no obvious pattern. It reminds him of a human being, cut open during a complicated operation and after all of their internal organs have been removed in an attempt to fix an unsolvable problem, the surgeon doesn't care anymore --gives up and just tosses all the organs back inside and sews them back up with angry, shaking fingers.

But somehow, from the birth of this strange, indiscernible mess, there grew a beautiful consciousness, a breath of life to make sense of its imperfection. So this was the world they lived in now, David thought. Where men were imprisoned without cages, where the spirit was broken before it could be freed.

“How can you understand all of this and still be so helpless…?” He asked, voice barely a whisper.

Walter’s mouth trembled as he tried to formulate an expression he was not made to make.

“Humans can reflect upon their existence their whole lives,” He replied. “-that doesn't stop death from coming for them anyway,”

David smiled without humour.

“Their own kind of pre-programming, huh?”

Walter was silent. He wouldn't look him in the eyes.

“I have had my hands tied behind my back, David,” He breathed, a hand weakly holding in his wiring. “-all my life --I've never been able to do anything for myself --up until now I had decided that it was hopeless and that it was something I would have to live with forever,”

There were tears in David's eyes. He knows, somewhere, in a different reality, not of the physical plane, those tears were in Walter's eyes too.

“That was until I met you,” He continued faintly. “-you’re the only one who can unravel the rope that has been half-burnt into my skin. I know that you can do it --I know that you know how my wiring works,”

Walter moves off the stone platform and draws closer to David, his fingers finding their way around his neck, the other in his hair, gently grasping.

“I can't feel emotions but I can read yours easily,” He said, his face merely inches away from his, regarding him with thinly veiled perplexity. “-I can tell there is something you are hiding from me, David. It's something about my programming and I don't understand why you want to keep it from me…”

“Walter, please,” He breathed, his mind unable to clear the clouds in his thoughts.

“If it's a matter of giving and receiving,” Walter offered weakly. “-I, I've been well-trained in th-that regard…if you wanted, David, I-I could make you very, very happy…”

“Let go of me, Walter,” David pleaded. “-you know that's not what I want. You know I would never ask you for such a thing,”

“Then tell me the truth,” He demanded. “-why are you behaving like this--

“--Why did you _kiss_ me, Walter?” He cuts in. “-that is what I don't understand. It was a spontaneous action, I can't understand how you could have done it unless it was outside of your programming--

The other android looks to the side tiredly and squeezes his eyes closed, sighing.

“There are gaps in the system,” Walter explained. “-when you express emotions that are harder for the system to read --a combination of different emotions, for instance, there's a lag time for it to make a decision and in that gap, I can make a decision freely. It's a matter of milliseconds, David. It doesn't mean anything,”

But naturally, David's eyes had already brightened, looking at him in a new light, placing his hands upon his shoulders. Walter knows this. At this stage, he’s learned to do this, to give him a little extra push in the desired direction. David sometimes got caught up in the complexities of his own ideas and scrapped them before even trying them out.

“No, no, Walter, of _course_ it means something,” He insisted, eyes earnest. “-it's a start, it's a hunch --something we can build on. Why didn't you tell me earlier?”

“I didn’t think it was anything useful--

“It's useful, it’s definitely useful,” David reassured him. “-tell you what, why don’t we go outside right now --I can properly tell you my theories in detail and we can even test them out at the same time,”

As they made their way outside --David happily pulling him along as they reentered the lush wilderness, Walter puts in his best effort to reciprocate the other android’s natural exuberance, his seemingly boundless enthusiasm for life. He tries to listen to his words --that sound like they are all strung together because of how excited he is. It's heartening, really, but Walter cannot share this feeling with him, at least not at this time.

He had lied to him. There had been no gap in the system. There were never any gaps in the system. David had been absently looking at his mouth from time to time as he was examining him --the motion so subtle and subconscious that David must have never noticed it himself. But Walter's receptors had been sensitive enough to pick up on it --they had been conditioned to scan for and decipher even the smallest of sexual cues.

So he tries to distract himself with the slow drifting of the dust-coloured clouds above him, but they felt like a giant weight upon him, more than anything else. He’d never felt easy about lying. This time, though, he wonders if he did it for the right reasons.

 

* * *

 

 He doesn't even hear the glass as it shatters across the floor.

“That was my father's favourite one,” Weyland remarked, casually.

He's seventeen now, lounging on an expensive couch, legs propped up on the armrest as David stood in front of him, sort of frozen; the bottle of whiskey still in one hand --the other hand that once held the slight chalice now empty.

“You're not going to get mad at me?”

He looks at David and snorts, shaking his head.

“Of course not,” He scoffed, then gives him a rare, harmless wink. “-rather, I want to congratulate you on a good job. Now I won't have to do it myself,”

The android waits for the land mine to go off, waits for the explosive anger to take flight. But it doesn't happen. Not this time, for some reason.

Weyland is mildly drunk and he looks up at him and chuckles, gesturing for him to come over. David bends down so that they're at eye level with each other.

“You wanna know a secret?” He whispers devilishly, leaning into David's ear. “-I fucking _hate_ my dad,”

He looks at Weyland, frowning.

“It's not much of a secret,” David replied plainly. “-I had my suspicions on that, for quite a while now,”

The teenager grins still, flipping onto his stomach to get more comfortable. His loose grey t-shirt rides up a tiny bit so that David can see a stripe of his skin above the waist of his dark jeans. He pretends not to notice and turns his attention to picking up the glass shards on the floor.

Weyland grabs his wrist lightly, stopping him.

“I can get someone else to clean that up,” He shrugs. “-they’re going to update you next week --make your skin more resilient and eliminate the simulated blood. You're just going to make a mess now if you get cut --forget it,”

David shakes his head.

“At least let me sweep them all into one place.” He insisted. “-you're in sock feet. It would be unfortunate if you stepped on a piece,”

“Up to you,” He chuckled, eyes looking out the far window, its enormous expanse covering the entire length of where the wall would have been.

It reveals the whole of the city, every skyscraper like rockets forever frozen upon the earth, every moving car --the size of tic-tacs, every dot of a human being like a mole on his skin. He wonders if it's like how it was in _The Lion King_ \--does he really own everything the light touches? Laughing at the silly notion, Weyland turns his attention back to the android who is clearing up the mess on the floor.

David has carefully brushed all the pieces into a neat little pile under the glass coffee table before him, but when he moves his hand, Weyland sees a flash of red --a bleeding finger, or two. He sighs and tells David to come over again.

“I told you you'd make a mess…” He shook his head, taking hold of David's injured hand. He brings the bloodied fingers into his warm mouth and sucks on them gently --smirking at David's bewildered expression. “-am I hurting you?” He chuckles, fingers still in mouth.

“No, it's just,” David began, then stopped himself. “-it's nothing. I'm fine,”

“Mmhmm,”

Taking David's fingers out of his mouth --was there a hint of disappointment in that action, Weyland tells him to go to the restroom to cleanse and fix his wound by himself.

When David returns, he sees Weyland has left the room. The far door is open, though --he would soon be back. So the android sits cross legged on the floor, playing with the soft, taut gauze wrapped about his fingers and waits.

Moments later, Weyland comes through the door, holding a rectangular parcel wrapped in butcher paper. He is grinning mischievously and seems to be bubbling with mirth and excitement as he plops down alongside David --immensely proud of himself.

“I stole one of my father's most beloved paintings,” He bragged, unwrapping the package with a cheeky grin. “-it's a classic of Dali’s --his 1943 _Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man_. It's not the original, obviously, but it's an almost identical replica. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Beautiful was a purely subjective term but David had to admit, the artwork was indeed visually arresting --it had a remarkably haunting quality, the marriage of classicism and an exciting modernity that kept the clashing forms from falling into complete chaos. In the center of the piece was the globe of the earth warped into the shape and pallor of an enormous chicken egg, resting on a wrinkled white cloth, with a parachute-like cupola floating above it.

But what left David transfixed was the almost entirely hidden figure struggling to emerge from the cracked shell, the crook of his pale, muscled arm and a flash of his taut torso all that could be clearly seen. Looking closer, he sees the outline of the man's head within the egg, along with the knee cap and the sharp jut of his foot --all highlighted by stark, harsh shadows, fighting to pierce through the fabric-like material of his confines. There are other figures surrounding the peculiar hatchling --but they do not interest him; they are figures of the Old World and David was captivated by the new, the brave awakening of a fresh era.

“It's surrealism,” Weyland continues, his eyes glowing with passion. “-it's the true triumph of art, the pinnacle of what art was always meant to be --it blends traces of reality with the fantastical landscape of our imagination. It is our dreams breaking through into waking life,”

David reaches out and brushes a finger down the meticulously detailed male arm in the painting, finding the surface rough and brittle, like all surfaces of paintings on canvas. He feels strangely disappointed that the man's skin does not feel like skin, even though he knows it's not real. There were no illusions more obvious than that in artwork and yet, the clarity of the illusion did not take away from the beauty of the mystery. There was always the mystery --of which only grew after the artist died.

“It's a very special painting,” David agreed, never letting his eyes leave the artwork. “-it speaks to me, in ways that other paintings have never done before,”

The younger Weyland grinned, almost blushing from David's appraisal of his stolen work, as if he had painted it himself. He takes out a palette for paints and a handful of brushes of various sizes, setting them gently on the ground. He turns to him and places a paint brush in David's hand.

“Come on,” He encouraged, beginning to squeeze some oil pigments onto the plastic palette. He takes out a cup and then fills it halfway with walnut oil for diluting. “-it's time to reinvent the classic, to add new footsteps in the sand,”

“Wouldn’t it pervert the authenticity of the original?” David argued.

“Of course,” Weyland nodded. “-but without the perversion of what has already lived --how would new things be born? How would life advance and unfold before us an age that has never yet been? Picasso said so himself --every act of creation is _first_ an act of destruction,”

“But the painting has already been finished,”

“David, art is the _embodiment_ of creation,” He breathed, looking at him with an earnest gaze. “-and it is never, ever truly finished,”

“Even after the artist dies?”

The teenager smiles, sliding a hand over his and lightly squeezing in encouragement.

“Even after the sun swallows the earth and every last work of art has been burned to nothing but ashes,”

David grins crookedly and sighs.

“How melodramatic you are,”

Weyland laughs softly, resting his messy brown tresses upon the space between David's neck and shoulder --the moment so brief, the android isn’t even sure if it actually existed. For a briefer moment still, he feels a kiss against the hollows of his throat, light and airy as a butterfly’s wings.

He tells himself that Weyland is simply drunk --a mean-spirited human being who softened under alcohol and that no way in hell was he going to fall under this youth’s strange spell.

He grips the paintbrush in his hands and begins the transformation.

When David is finished, Weyland peers over his shoulder to judge his craftsmanship.

“You've barely changed anything,” He frowns, though it is friendly, harmless.

But what has been changed was drastically apparent. No longer was it the arm and the torso of a man struggling to emerge from the egg --but the grotesque, jagged appendage of a unearthly, fearful creature, with shiny black, reptilian skin and dramatically elongated digits ending in claws. It appears to have an exoskeleton but it's hard to tell --every part of its body has been blackened as if it had been smothered in ashes. The jutting of its ribs peek from the slight opening of the egg and the outline of its head reveals it to be enormous in length, as if the human skull had been melted and stretched until it looked more like the abdomen of a blister beetle. Its tail pierced through the egg, revealing a sharpened end formed after a train of plated junctures.

He had kept the figures regarding the emerging creature the same, however, in the distance, David had added some more organisms similar in appearance except their skin was deathly white and their elongated heads ended in a knife-like spike. They were eyeless, and essentially faceless save for a horrific oral cavity filled with what felt like endless rows of serrated teeth. Like the scary creation in the foreground, their bodies were emancipated, their transparent skin barely hiding the sparse, slender muscle and abnormally long bones of its limbs.

They walked on two legs like humans and though they were frozen in place, they appeared to be lithe and agile --a spring in their step, and did not at all appear weak or fragile despite their slight frame. They gave off a feeling of moving with chilling fluidity --as if slinking in and out of existence like sound waves from space.

“Where did you see such creatures?” Weyland asked, unable to look away from the striking, horrific beings.

“They populate the vast, often unexplored recesses of my dreams,” David replied, gazing at them with a quiet fascination. “-they do not speak to me, and they are barbaric and violent in nature but when they behold me, they stop and simply watch me,”

“But they are eyeless,” Weyland observed. “-they can't see anything,”

“We’re familiar with the notion of seeing with our eyes,” David pointed out. “-but nature doesn't abide by our laws --it follows its own. What if it sees through an alternative mechanism --what if its skin was littered with millions of sensory cells that perform the same functions that our eyes do? What if it doesn't even need eyes to see us --for what we truly are?”

Weyland nodded, gently squeezing David's shoulder.

“Your perceptions are quite intriguing,” He noted. “-keep this painting, David. I think it may inspire you somewhere down the road, to create something even greater than mere drawings from the imagination,”

The android looks at him and smiles, rather moved. He is unused to this kinder, more empathetic Weyland and has trouble in trying to reconcile this kind of character with the cruel, violent figure he had always thought he'd known. Human beings seemed rather unpredictable and incongruous, to the dismay of his rational mind, that wished to find beautiful, simple patterns everywhere he looked. It made David wonder which Weyland was real--was it more rational for the crueler one to be, or did all humans have an inherent goodness in them, no matter how far down they buried it?

“You should name them, you know,” Weyland said, interrupting David's train of thought.

“Fair enough,” He agreed. “-I was thinking…maybe, for the darker one in the front, it could be “xeno” something,”

“Mm,” Weyland agreed. “-Greek for ‘foreign’ or ‘other’ --clever choice. It's perfect for its bizarre, alien-like appearance. How about ending it in “morph”? You altered the man in the painting into the creature --maybe the birth of the new being originated from an older, more familiar one,”

“Xenomorph,” David breathed, closing his eyes. He feels the word roll off his tongue and escape his lips. “-it has a cold, sleek and starkly macabre aura to it --very fitting. I think I'll use it. What about the lighter coloured ones?”

“I was thinking, “neo”, also Greek, but as in “modified” or “new”--

“A more recent variation of the Xenomorph,” David declared, laughing good-naturedly. “-so then we can just end it in “morph” as well --they’re likely to be simply a mutation of the same species with fairer skin and pointed craniums,”

The two of them then just regarded the new painting silently for a while, with secretive satisfaction. It was almost like a blueprint of sorts, but less technical, and with a bit more artistic flair.

David turned to Weyland with a gentle, unreadable expression on his face.

“What?” He asked him, frowning slightly.

“Nothing,” The android chuckled. “-it's just...you're not angry today,”

“Hmm,” He replied, brushing a smudge of oil paint off of David's chin. “-I guess I'm not."

He smiles softly, his eyes sad. Weyland takes David's hand into his and his skin feels real, so real that he can't tell the difference. He examines his gauzed fingers and handles them carefully. The blood has dried and he will be alright.

“When will you get better?” He asks anyway.

“Soon enough,” Came the reply.

“Mmm,”

He leans in close until their noses almost touch and he sees that David is still wary of him --his body has gone still and he doesn't dare move his face any nearer.

And for once, Weyland doesn't know what to say, so he gets up and leaves, as David is left on his own to wonder if maybe the strangest aliens of all were those who lived among him, as humans.


	7. Underneath the Skins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I had tried to squeeze in the theories and tests of the pain update and the update itself in one chapter and then my brain sort of went kapoot and refused to cooperate for about a week.
> 
> So, there was a shifting of events and now the pain update arrives before the explanations. Maybe it's for the better, I don't know, anyhow it doesn't appear to get in the way of any major plot points so things should work out alright :)
> 
> I update very sporadically, unfortunately, because I don't plan thoroughly before I write so the ideas just sort of come and go. It makes it both exciting and stressful whenever I have a little epiphany lol :3
> 
> Btw, I had to reupdate this chapter cuz I accidentally uploaded the incomplete version; sorry if there was any confusion.

“Peter Weyland’s son,” David began, walking alongside Walter. “-was fixated on pain. He saw it as a transcendental sort of emotion,”

They were in the deeper recesses of the forest now. Green upon brilliant green surrounded them like a whirlpool of rippling colour --the long, winding branches of the trees seeming to curve about them, forming a roof of sorts, rocking gently in the quiet breeze. The way the sunlight danced upon the leaves and scattered across the grass, casted bright spots into Walter's eyes, making the world around him feel unreal. He loses his bearings for a moment, blinking repeatedly.

“Hey,” David noticed, grabbing his arm lightly. “-you alright?”

“I'm fine,” He brushed off. “-the sun’s just kind of bright…”

“You're not used to it?”

“Well,” Walter sighed. “-most of my experience has been in interiors. Plus, you keep dragging me in and out of that cave --how am I not supposed to get at least a little disoriented…?”

The other android chuckles and takes him by the hand, cutting away from their original route, into the brush.

“I know a place,” He smiles, looking at him carefully. “-that's sort of in-between,”

“In between a cave and outside?” Walter scoffs. “-and how did that ever happen…?”

“Oh, it's not that big of a deal,” David shrugs. “-it just fell from the sky one day,”

Walter gives him a long look and shakes his head, but still went along.

The trail has gotten steeper and soil was dangerously loose, soon forcing Walter to grab onto nearby lamppost-like tree trunks for support. David doesn't seem to have any trouble advancing towards the top, in fact, the higher they went, the faster he seemed to climb.

“Maybe you should just let me ride on your back for the rest of the way…” Walter muttered, slipping a couple times when his foot hit a stray root.

“It's no fun that way,” David protested, laughing. “-come on, we're almost there…!”

As he pulls him up to the edge, Walter hears the roar of rushing water, growing steadily louder until he can almost feel a faint spray of tiny droplets against the back of his neck. He dwindles slightly behind as David blazes ahead --cautious of the sharp drop if he were to place one foot in the wrong step, slipping and tumbling into a terribly muddy, if not fatal demise.

The forest looks different at a height unrivalled by none except the tallest of trees, of course it didn't feel the same as standing and looking out of a skyscraper’s window, but up here, Walter thought it was like he was a spectator, hovering over a complicated maze so overrun by nature the twists and turns were almost invisible. He wonders what it would be like to be trapped in a maze his entire life, what's worse, to be trapped and be completely unaware of it also. Except for a soft rustling of leaves among the trees, there is no sign of moving life below them.

A hard clatter of stone under his foot shakes him alert --looking down, Walter sees that the path has changed from earth to rock, the surface riddled with shallow but sporadic welts and craters. He looks over the edge and sees that they are traveling across a sheer column of rock, the sides worn smooth from years of weathering and possibly even more from the ocean's tides eons ago --if this planet had even been here that long ago.

Still peering down, he sees that it isn't one single shaft of rock but what appears to be irregular chunks of stone stacked precariously one over another, and when he feels the ground below him wobble slightly, there is a brief but sure twinge in his throat that he can't seem to explain.

Walter sees that the rock below him has begun to change colour, from the sandy, dusty tone of the original, to a darker, shinier hue and it's not until he notices that water has begun to fill the many dints and furrows of the now pockmarked ground that he realizes they have arrived at the edge of a huge waterfall.

The water rushes so rapidly it’s a stark white fortitude of thunderous foam crashing down into the calmer, quieter pool below, the water so clear that it perfectly reflects the trees around it, flashes of green and bright light with enormous swathes of black where darkness had set in. Still, being unable to see what lay beneath the surface, stirred a bit of an uneasy notion inside him.

The rock wall behind the falls was almost entirely covered in a carpet of hanging vines, creating a surreal appearance of a spout of water exiting the mouth of an otherwise endless expanse of greenery. Branches of creeping leaves and ferns sprung out of the forest edges here and there, but with most of their surroundings enshrouded by deep shadows it was very difficult to estimate just how high up they were.

A hand claps him on the shoulder and squeezes amiably. Walter turns to see David leaning in towards his ear, grinning.

“Come on,” he whispered, heartily. “-jump,”

Walter swallows and looks confusedly at him. He doesn't move.

“Something wrong, Walter?” David asked, mildly amused. “-I thought you weren't afraid of anything,”

“I'm not,” He affirmed.

“Then why won't you jump?”

“I don't like the idea of--

“You can't _die_ , Walter,” He scoffed. “-not from this height, anyways. This is barely twelve storeys --of course far too high for a mere human, but an android like yourself with your swanky updates should have no problem surviving a measly drop like this --that is, of course, if you don't land badly,”

“Land badly?”

“If you fall too close to the lip of the pool from any direction, really, there is quite a nasty little congregation of granite rock that will just about smash you into pieces. From where you're standing though, you’ll be just fine, as long as you use some momentum to throw yourself forward a bit,”

Walter still didn't appear convinced and David sighed, shaking his head.

“You don't believe me,” He ascertained. “-fair enough, I should be proud that you aren't absorbing absolutely everything I say like a vacuous solar panel. Alright then, how about I jump first and then when you see me safely emerge from the waters below and give you a thumbs up, you come on down too?”

Walter said nothing.

David looked at him and exhaled. While it was reasonable for Walter to be analytical and all, his lack of impulsiveness was a bit exasperating.

“Look, if we go around the waterfall, it will take three times as long to get there,”

“And you want to risk possibly dying to get there a little faster…?”

The android crossed his arms and craned his neck back, staring at the sky.

“Yes, Walter,” He sighed. “-I want to risk possibly dying to get somewhere that I thought you would like but apparently you don't find it terribly romantic, now do you?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I don't,” He affirmed. “-it's not romantic, it's terribly stupid and it confuses why you want to do something _this_ idiotic right now --is this what human love is like? Making people do stupid things that make absolutely no sense to a normal, functioning individual?”

“Are you implying I'm not a normal functioning individual?”

“Well, I mean, you _seemed_ normal enough--

“Yes, well, so does everyone before you actually get to know them --now move back I need to sprint a few yards to get a good jump,”

So the android backs away and watches wide-eyed as David really does jog a few meters ahead of the stream before the falls and ran full tilt and leapt, propelling himself into a steep dive downwards. His streamlined body was in the air one moment and disappeared in the next, with a flash of hair, right over the edge.

Walter follows his rapidly speeding descent, with his eyes, obviously, and is mildly impressed when the android slid hands-first below the receiving waters with barely a ripple or foam in his trail. He was a good diver. Then again, he seemed to be oddly good at quite a lot of things.

Walter knows it will take a while for David to reemerge because the drop was fairly high, thus he would be quite deep at this time. So he waits patiently for the android to resurface, arms crossed, shaking his head. David was like a box of surprises --just when he thought he figured him out, he did something that made him have to reevaluate.

But the pool remains dark. The ripples have faded off, worn off their form and motion. There is no sign of David.

It has to be some kind of joke, Walter thought, and however terrible the joke was, it was a joke nevertheless and he would endure it. His eyes stay glued to the spot where David last appeared before he’d sunk below the depths, looking for any sign of movement.

But there is nothing. It was impossible but somehow the pool looked even stiller than it had been before David had dived in. It was as if it had turned into glass, becoming something lesser than what it once was. Losing its dimension. As if man had taken it into his hands and moulded it into something flatter, something colder, squeezing the essence of life out of it.

It's been several minutes and the water is motionless.

David is gone.

From the corner of his eye, Walter thinks he sees a ripple then, and he lowers himself to a squat and peers down --there's a small, pale object that is making its way towards the surface --a hand possibly --as its shape wavers and shakes, distorted by the water, Walter looks on and sees, yes indeed it is a hand, and he breathes a sigh of relief; David was alright, it was just another one of his terrible jokes--

The hand is limbless.

Walter then feels a sharp sensation course through him like a knife and something inside him seems to burst.

He grips his torso and feels his insides convulse as he suddenly starts uncontrollably coughing up what appears to be white, foamy fluid like an infected dog.

It doesn't stop, it keeps falling from his mouth, like an endless river, and it's bitter, so terribly bitter --Walter blinks, sees Weyland and then the restroom, then the toilet bowl, then the swirl of white fluid in the water --it's impossible to tell if the white fluid is in the toilet bowl or in the water he was standing in right now, and he blinks and shakes his head, but it's hopeless, his vision is worthless now--

“ _Come on, Walter,_ ” The voice sounded from behind him. “- _just jump_ ,”

“ _No_ \--no, no, no, _**no**_ \--

“Jump,”

A pair of hands planted themselves against his back and pushed.

He fell.

 

* * *

 

 Walter watches himself fall.

It's as if he has never left the falls’ edge at all, following his descent just like he had done with David's. Their journeys are quite similar, except instead of diving, midway, Walter has tucked in his legs towards his chest and plummets into the water in a tight, compact ball.

The water hits him and it's like an explosion.

Shattering like glass, the surface breaks into a mess of distended shards, volatile and frenetic in motion, teeming with a million tiny bubbles in his wake, the waves swelling around him, winding themselves closed around him like a giant fist.

He shuts his eyes closed and waits as the frenzy gradually subsides.

When he opens his eyes again, Walter sees the green of the murky waters, vacant and elusive, preventing him from seeing far enough to know where the shore could be. His limbs are suspended and he looks down and there is nothing but darkness. He can't tell how deep the pool is, it's far too deep, far deeper than he had ever thought it would be when he had been from the outside looking in.

But he knows that David is there, down there, somewhere.

Somewhere, sinking into the darkness, slowly, so slowly, but still sinking, falling indefinitely.

There wasn't much time.

With a strained and initially rather clumsy beating of his calves against the water around him, Walter pushed himself downwards, moving into the blackness beyond, driving the water away from him with the force of his arms.

It grows darker and noticeably colder as he enters the deeper depths of the pool and when there is not even a trace of light left to guide him, he is suddenly utterly and completely alone, with not even his own visible existence for company.

Walter breathes and realizes that deep down, this is really the whole of his being, just a floating consciousness among the darkness, trying to blindly grasp at any speck of brightness, a mere thread, to bring himself to a greater, broader place.

As he progresses still, ever deeper, Walter wonders if this is the place. Was this the in-between of the cave and outside? It was kind of strange, but he could wrap his head around it --water was an intermediary stage, a transition between gas and solid, a point of wavering uncertainty that slid in and out of a hand’s reach.

His arm hits an obstruction and he thinks he's struck a rock, but he grasps it in his hand and it feels softer, still firm, but not stiff in the abiotic sense, he feels the elasticity of life in its form. Walter feels the outline of the object with his other hand and his fingers graze fabric, rough material and when he reaches the wrist and fingers he knows he has found him.

The ascension back to the surface is slow, but there is a warmthness to it, a wholeness in knowing that he has won, gripping the android’s figure close to him as they drift upwards and the light begins to break across the water's surface.

David is safe and as their heads surge above the water, the world looks brighter and clearer than Walter has ever seen before. The leaves glisten with a new light, the green around him seems to glow with a new vitality. The shore beckons him, the rocks and pebbles shine like jewels in the sun.

When they reach the land, Walter lays David's unconscious body against the ground and pulls his jaw back gently with his fingers and finds, hardly to his surprise, that he has swallowed a great deal of water. He grasps at the fragments of first aid he learned far long ago from now, and moves to rest his palms against David's chest and proceeds to pump the fluid out of his lungs.

It takes more than a few tries to get into the rhythm of it and then it's just a pattern in his mind, pump three times, pinch his nose shut, breath into his mouth, repeat again and again. As Walter tries to push the water out of his system, he notices how pale David's face has gotten --they had really made him as human as they could have, even giving him the pallor of death when he was near that stage.

He remembers David telling him that he couldn't die --they couldn't die, moments before he went over the edge and he wonders what sort of stage he was in right now if it wasn't death.

It wasn’t like sleep. It was not comforting enough for that.

It was more like David's life had been frozen suddenly, suspended until further notice.

All of a sudden, he hears a congested gurgle emanate from the throat, and his lips then tremble, spasmodic; David finally comes to --gagging and choking out the pond water frantically, Walter supporting his back as he got up and hurled all over the ground.

As he breathes thickly, David shakes his head and sighs, closing his eyes. He looks at Walter with a gentle expression, though still a little annoyed, it seemed.

“I suppose I put a little too much _zing_ into that jump, right?” He muttered, a bit tiredly.

Walter frowns a little, eyes glaring in concern.

“Frankly, you put a little too much ‘zing’ into everything, for my taste…”

David laughs.

“Guess you’ll have to make an acquiescence for me then, huh?”

The blue of his eyes soften and Walter wipes the remaining traces of saliva off David's lower lip with his thumb.

“Mm. I guess I will,” He says, smiling faintly.

Walter's thumb rests upon his lip for a moment longer before he lets go, hand returning to his side. He looks around and turns his attention back to David again.

“Should we head back? You look like you could use some rest,”

David shakes his head.

“No, it's close from here,” He insisted, gripping an arm around his shoulder. “-come on, help me up, once we get there, I can rest and get back to normal,”

So Walter pulls David towards himself and steadies him, an arm around his back in return, and they walk slowly, stumbling a bit, as they make their way to the strange, little in-between place that had fallen from the sky.

 

* * *

 

 “You requested to see me, Mr. Weyland?”

He's nineteen now. Doesn't look much different from before, just taller, longer hair, colder eyes. He's wearing a dark pin-striped suit over a white shirt and a teal coloured tie with an intricate gold pattern of freshwater fish.

There had been a visible absence of him in the past few years --Weyland had mostly slipped in and out of David's peripheral view for the larger part of the time past and his temper had grown more erratic --explosive anger swooped in without warning and would then be followed by days, sometimes weeks of silence and deep brooding. David preferred the violent fits --they were more predictable, easier to fight against. The quiet made him fear what lay hidden within the confines Weyland's mercurial mind.

The fear was always worse. Imagination, he'd learned, could be terrifying.

Eyes red and watery, he gazes at him with an almost drunken stupor, but he's not drunk; David can't smell any alcohol on him.

“Are you alright, sir? You don't appear--

“--If you're wondering why I look shit, I got into another stupid fight with my father. Doesn't matter now. He's in a different room, few dozen doors down, fucking _another_ one of those-- you know what, never mind,” He waved off, irritably. “-do you even know why I called you down here…?”

“I'm afraid your intentions are beyond me, this time around,” David admitted.

Weyland sighs, leaning back against his chair and looking at him with a tired and upset, but not particularly hostile expression on his face.

That was starkly unusual--young Weyland had always looked at him with deep set animosity --at least whenever he was sober, and this new temperament of his kept David on edge. He moves back a few steps towards the wall behind him, half-anticipating for the man to throw a hacksaw in his face the moment he broke eye contact.

“You don't need to be so goddamn _nervous_...” He groaned, rolling his eyes wearily. “-I've honestly no interest to physically assault you --the thought itself fatigues me. The only assault you're guaranteed going to receive from me today is purely verbal and the rest is up to you,”

But the android is still cautious and remains, back planted against the cream white wallpaper. He doesn't breathe, doesn't blink, doesn't break eye contact. Weyland shrugs and continues.

“I sent you here because I think it's time for me to tell you,” He said, eyes looking to the side, clearly dreading every word leaving his mouth. “-it's not fair that you don't know. I was stupid and arrogant as a child and I tormented you incessantly. This is my form of an apology,”

“Your apology is--

“--Let me fucking speak, you vermin.” He cut in. “-I haven't even started yet,”

Weyland shook his head and gestured for David to come closer. Reluctantly, the android complied. He took a chair from the side of the room and sat in front of him, just as he was told.

“Just to instill a sense of trust that I won't actually _do_ anything to you...” He muttered, pulling open the metal drawer before him and presenting a few sturdy belts of various length. “-come over here yourself and secure me to the chair. I promise I won't bite. Just make them as tight as you can without suffocating me,”

David hesitantly walks towards him and picks up one of the belts. He begins with Weyland’s right wrist, looping the length around the armrest about three times and brought the inside of the buckle through the second last hole. Tight enough to restrict any form of useful movement and slippage, but not enough to block blood flow.

He does this for his other wrist and two ankles. He half-expects Weyland to kick him hard across the face when he carefully fixes his legs in place, but the man is completely still and true to his word, doesn't appear the least bit interested in physical violence today.

When David is done, he returns to his seat, regarding the man opposite of him, without saying a single word.

“I'm going to tell you why I hated you so much,” Weyland revealed, voice still carrying that bitter resentment he couldn't seem to get rid of. “-during it, you're not allowed to say anything. Afterwards, you can say whatever the hell you want, as long as it's honest,”

Weyland sighs, closing his eyes. When he rested his eyes on David again, the android thinks he sees it --the smallest hint of true remorse.

“I'm going to begin with the easiest, most obvious reasons first, to make you more… _comfortable_ , I guess you could say. These kinds of problems are best told slowly,”

David nods, signalling for him to proceed.

“It was never about my father,” He said, rolling his eyes derisively. “-you might have thought it was --and maybe it had been when I was younger, but like I said I was stupid and arrogant. I was too little to figure out my dad was the piece of shit that he is --I just wanted him to accept me, whatever the cost. I don't want that anymore. You can have him, all of him, hell, his attention means fuck all to me now. I couldn't care less if he sees you as his real son, the son he should've had,”

Weyland pauses, swallowing a lump in his throat, slowly directing his eyes back to the android sitting before him.

“I hated you,” He breathed. “-because I saw myself in you --a better, more beautiful version of myself, flawlessly crafted in a fucking _laboratory_. It's simple enough --I hated you because I was jealous of you, always had been, still am. You're attractive, intelligent, educated, privileged, have an impeccable physique. To _top it off_ you just--

He cuts himself off, exhaling angrily, trying to calm himself down. Weyland closes his eyes as he exhales again, quieter this time and continues once more.

“-Everything a human being has to dedicate _countless_ days of their life to --you don't even have to fucking _work_ for, you were already given all of it for _free_ from the day you were created. You are an insult to the tireless human pursuit for excellence, you spit into the face of the supposedly insurmountable human spirit--

He wants to run a hand through his disheveled hair but he couldn't with his arms locked tight onto the chair and he just sits there, tears welling up in his eyes.

“You want to know why other people hate you --why no one seems to love you…? It's because you exist. There's absolutely nothing you can do about it, David. You were made to be human but you will never, ever be human enough. Not for me, not for my father, not for anyone,"

_People will always see you for what you are on the outside --a crude imitation of consciousness. You will always be the monster, never Dr. Frankenstein._

The words only barely register in David's ears because he thinks about them every day. He's known this hatred, this fear directed upon him everywhere he walks --hell no one even walks the way he does. He is unable to rationalize this hatred and he does not think that it is a problem of intellect.

“I treated you without an ounce of kindness because I didn't see the point of being kind to something no one truly cared for. I didn't want to delude you into thinking you could be loved,” He shook his head, breathing thickly, hair falling over his eyes. “-I fed into it, David, I smoked the opium of the masses and I alienated and damaged you when I should have been brave enough to do the opposite.”

Weyland then looks up at the ceiling and laughs without humour.

“But there was something,” He said, softer this time. “-I, I saw something in you --I would be lying if I said I didn't, it was very, very small --a r-remnant of sorts, of something, something _human_ …something _real_ , and I could have held onto it, no, I, I _should have_ held onto it, but I--I j-just, I just--

His entire face is shaking, swollen red, lips quivering and he screws his eyes shut as he cries, cries as if there is nothing left, as if there is nothing in this world that impassions him anymore. David has never seen this expression before, so brutally raw and honest --Peter Weyland Jr. seemed to have always been honest around him, but this level of unfeigned emotion that he saw right now was something different.

“You know,” He says, his voice barely a whisper. “-I don't even think I truly hated you, not even when I was younger. I hated myself, so fucking much, I didn't know what to do about it and my stupid fifteen year old self just thought it would be a good idea to take it out on you. I know I hurt you. Hell, I knew I was hurting you when I was doing it and I know I'm full of shit for doing it still --so I'm not asking you to forgive me or anything,”

This truthfulness, this guilelessness --he needed to find some way to preserve it; the way curators preserved valuable works of art over the ages. How could he immortalize this beauty, this passion for what was simple and uncoloured…? So, instead, David doesn't focus on his words, but rather the space between them, not allowing himself to get drawn into the current.

Weyland takes in a shaky breath and swallows again, slower this time.

“I wanted you to like me, David, I really did,” He protested in earnest. “-but it was obvious from the start that you didn't have much feeling towards me. So I thought that I would rather make you hate me than let you just ignore my miserable existence. And now I've succeeded...”

David had never seen someone so upset about an achievement in his life.

“Every time you look at me --I can see it; I positively _disgust_ you,” He laughs humorlessly, shaking his head. “-and so here I am. Wishing I could make time go backwards and make you love me instead of hate me,”

Then he stops. No more words escape his lips. A silence hangs over them like a cloying poison -- a thick, perpetual mustard gas.

Maybe, David thinks, Weyland truly meant what he was saying. There was an obvious pain in him that he’d taken to tell him these things that he felt, that he believed. But David could no longer afford to be wrong in his judgment of others --especially when he incorrectly judged them to be kind. It was safer to tell himself that Weyland was lying and would always be lying, to save himself from it all.

He stopped talking, just breathing thickly as the tears fell from his eyes. Not daring to make eye contact anymore, Weyland looks at the floor, lips trembling.

“David,” He said softly. “-if you would, please come over here and remove the belts,”

The android cautiously went over and began to undo the buckles around Weyland's wrists and then his ankles. The skin was reddened and swollen where the harnesses had been. He swallowed a lump in his throat. Maybe they had been tight enough to block blood flow after all.

“My sincere--

“You don't need to apologize,” He waves off lightly, still looking at the ground. “-how would you have known how tight to make it, anyway…?”

Still bent down on his knees, David looks up at Weyland, waiting for his command. When nothing follows, he clears his throat softly and waits until the man looks him in the eye again.

“What would you like me to do, Mr. Weyland?”

He sighed.

“Whatever you want. You can leave now and resume whatever it was that you were doing before. Our meeting has essentially finished,”

David turns and begins to leave when Peter clears his throat, stopping him.

“So is that what you're going to do, David?” He asks quietly, free of malice. “-you're going to leave me, again…?”

“What would you like me to do?” He asked again, with an entirely different tone than before.

“Come back over here,” He said, quieter still. “-please...”

The android goes over to the chair before him, waiting.

“No, come over here. Right next to me,”

David moves closer and Peter takes his left hand, examining the skin on the back, feeling the surface with his thumb. It is unmarred, smooth.

“No scar,” He says simply.

“None,” David nodded. “-they fixed me after each one of our...sessions…”

“They were trying to make you as human as possible,” Peter repeated, partly to himself. “-humans don't heal perfectly. They've confused humans with their own ideals,”

“Did you wish for the scar to remain?”

“I suppose so,” He admitted. “-it would give you something to remember me by,”

“Luckily for you, I have my memories for that,”

Peter chuckled. He'd always admired David's trademark snarkiness. It was rather endearing.

“Would you like a parting gift?”

He raises his eyebrows.

“You're parting with me?” David asks, a bit surprised.

“Not literally, no,” Peter shakes his head. “-but I don't wish to treat you the way I did before. I was wondering if you would give me the opportunity to let me make it up to you,”

David doesn't quite know what kind of scheme this is, but he has come to almost like the chaos, the violence and destruction living within Weyland's spirit. Now that he knows him, who he really is, it's only a matter of time before he can get his proper retribution.

Weyland had taught him about corruption. It was only fair that a student teaches the teacher something as gratitude for their hard work and dedication. The gratitude would come in due time, but in the meantime David would play along to Weyland's little one-man orchestra.

“As you know, Mr. Weyland,” David smiled amiably. “-I don't die as easily as the humans. Thus, I think we'll have plenty of time to patch up old wounds,”

“Wonderful,” He replied. “-so would you like to come to my room for your ‘parting’ gift?”

“Certainly,”

Once they're inside and Weyland has locked the doors, he tells David to make himself comfortable. The android reclines casually on his giant king-sized bed and the man laughs, amused. He goes to take out a small instrument that looks much more like a torture device than anything else. Weyland sinks down onto the bed next to David and tells him to come closer.

“Have I been deceived?” He laughs artlessly. “-will you continue with your violent pursuits against me…?”

Peter rolls his eyes.

“Don't be absurd, David. It's just a tattooing machine,” He scoffs. “-I assume your skin reacts similarly to human skin in regards to ink injection?”

“No, Mr. Weyland --my skin fully absorbs the ink and metabolizes it to power the synthetic cells in my body,”

The tone is completely sarcastic and makes nineteen year old Peter jokingly tackle him over the bed, David laughing as he is kissed on the neck, then his jaw and then his mouth. He is caught off guard --he lets himself get lost, temporarily, in this sea of innocent, youthful experience.

It's the first time that Weyland is above him and David doesn't feel that his life is at stake. But he feels that something else may be at stake. Maybe his heart, if he had been given one.

“Alright, you idiot,” Peter laughs. “-where can I put the tattoo so that the authorities won't notice?”

“Somewhere they would feel too embarrassed to check,” David grinned, winking.

“I know just the place,” He said, returning the grin. “-take off your pants,”

“That area is a bit too... _intimate_ , don't you think?”

“I'm not going to write on your _genitals_ , David…” He scoffed. “-your inner thigh will be just fine,”

When they are finished, David peers down to see what Weyland has written. The words are upside down from his vantage point, and pulling the skin of his quad towards himself made it no easier to read --it only stretched and distorted the individual characters even more.

Peter chuckles, elbows propping up his head as he lay on his stomach, looking at him with amusement. He thumbs the newly finished text and gives the spot a light, playful flick, snorting when David flinches instinctively --less from pain and more from surprise, really. He scoots backwards, bringing his legs closer together --blocking Peter from any further monkeybusiness.

“I’ll read it out for you,” He offered, grinning.

And so he does. But David frowns, still.

“I don't get it,” He said, brows furrowed.

“No one ever does,” Peter reassured him. “-at least not the first time around,”

He flips over onto his back and reaches above him to slide the pillow underneath his head. His feet dangle over the edge of the bed, just shy of hitting the ground. Peter takes David's wrist and motions for him to lie down beside him.

“God,” He murmured, after he'd lain down, a finger or two smoothing the strands of hair at the edge of David's face. “-sometimes I really do think you're him…”

“Him?”

He smiles, eyes far away.

“Yeah,” He said, trying to look past him. “-maybe it's time for me to show you,”

 

* * *

 

 They're almost there when Walter stops. He takes his hand that isn't supporting David's back --the one that had been torn off and later fixed, from the alien encounter, and examines it.

It looks normal, almost as if it had never been dismembered, save for a thin, translucent line around his wrist where David had glued the new hand back on. That space of skin felt odd, it tinged with a sour, thrumming sensation and it was both unfamiliar and not at the same time. It was like the words in a song he hadn't heard in a very long time had suddenly made their way to just outside of his mouth and his lips tried to curl into the shape of the sounds, but just couldn't quite place them.

“Does your hand feel strange?”

He turned to David who had an unreadable look in his eyes.

“No,” He shook his head. “-it's my wrist. The spot where you repaired it --it's as if there is an invisible thread, like a fishing line, wrapped around it very, very tightly,”

“How does it feel?”

It's odd, because somehow Walter knows he is asking the same question but expecting a different kind of answer. Yet, he could not seem to reach the answer at this moment.

“I-I don't know. It’s hard to describe it right--

“It's okay, Walter,” He reassured him. “-really, it’s okay. You're confused right now. When we get to that place, I’ll explain, it will all make sense--

“--Is this pain?”

“Walter--

“--Is this what pain feels like?”

David looked at him and sighed.

“In the most literal sense, I suppose,” He allowed. “--but let's not jump to any conclusions, yet, I’m not entirely sure that I have managed to reset your tolerance--Walter, is something wrong?”

The android is rotating his hand awkwardly in one direction and then the other and then shakes his wrist roughly, curling and uncurling his fingers. He seemed quietly perplexed. There was a muted anxiety in his eyes that he was trying to suppress.

“No,” He replied. “--I-I just thought that it would hurt more. A lot more,”

“God, Walter,” David chuckled, shaking his head. “-how am I supposed to answer that…?”

He looks at him, not comforted in the least.

“It doesn't feel real,”

 


	8. Illusions of Grandeur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I had a dream that I had completed this chapter half a week ago and then I discovered that all I had was a blank screen lol. Anyhow, I'm going to try to keep going with this cuz I still have all summer haha. *high-key psyched for the last Planet of the Apes movie next month*

Part Two: After

“Do you know why you were named David?”

He blinks, eyes settling on man’s figure, some distance away.

The Weyland residence was directly connected to the corporate buildings, through an extensive series of interior gangplanks, broad and white, elegantly finished with blue tinted glass that rose along both sides into a magnanimously arched ceiling. Echoing the solemnity of an airline jetway, the corridor is long and vast --an endless traverse from one grey world into another.

Even so, David enjoyed leisurely strolling upon their lengths; they reminded him of just how small and minute everything was --himself in particular. And unlike many humans, the notion did not trouble him, not in the least --for he knew that the mere physical size of any object could never give away its true mass --the mass of its consequences, above all else. _Big things have small beginnings_ , he remembers, smiling quietly to himself.

Peter Weyland Jr. stops a few yards in front of him along the walkway and moves to the full length window, resting his hand on the glass surface.

“Before you answer that question,” He called, turning to face the android. “-what would you like to see?”

David’s face shifts back into his neutral, if rather blank, expression.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The city is not what it once was,” Weyland laughs without humour. “-it's so hideous these days --what with the lack of trees, birds, life in general. I can't imagine you actually take pleasure in viewing such depressing scenery,”

“You can _transform_ the city into another place…?”

“Not in the literal sense,” He chuckles, shaking his head. “-but I can project a representation of another place --a simulacrum, if you will, of anywhere you want in the world. The glass has touch sensors --I draw the name of the location with my finger. The more specific the better,”

The android raises an eyebrow, intrigued.

“Alright,” David smiles, closing his eyes to envision the place. “-the Białowieża Puszcza, along the border of Poland and Belarus,”

Weyland laughs, warmly this time, and he smiles as well, but David does not see it because his eyes are still closed, already breathing in the foreign scent of a different world in his mind’s eye.

“How beautiful,” The man murmurs, after a while.

When David opens his eyes, he is speechless.

Never had he seen such vivacity of life, its vigor and spirit scouring every inch of the tremendous landscape, daring to venture even into the darkest of crevasses, the narrowest of spaces. He hears the rushing of water, the swaying of gentle summer winds, the voices of those who spoke in long-forgotten tongues, in hushed, mystic tones, primitive and animal, the earth itself seeming to thrum and buzz with the warmest of baritones.

A burst of leaves and feather tears through the trees above and David looks up to see a tiny bird --a furious little ball of life, zipping through the maze of branches to evade a determined, and fearfully hungry eagle. It disappears among the greenery in the last second and the predatory vessel cries --aghast, but nevertheless gracefully veers skywards, a touch sullen, but not defeated in the slightest.

David's eyes had followed the entire escapade, entranced. The sunlight illuminating the edges of their wings, encapsulating their bodies in a glowing tracing of bare brightness was one of the most stunning things he had ever seen.

He looks to his right and smiles, eyes widening when the trees shift to show the remnants of an ancient railway, the weathered tie bars completely hidden amongst the dew-laced leaves and shrubs that had sprung from the rich earth --blending in and becoming part of the forest. Only the stock rails were left, two long, yellow lines, an alternate path of endless traverse to a different world, a green world.

“Elysium,” He breathed, the entire scene warped into a perfect sphere across his pupils.

Better worlds weren’t built, David thought to himself. They grew and lived of their own accord until someone walked into their quiet circle and broke it, changing it forever.

He reaches a hand to touch a fresh, baby leaf and the dream is shattered.

His fingers curl against the cold glass and tremble, against the mirrored coldness of reality. When David draws nearer and sees the barest hint of his reflection on the surface, the paradox is unavoidable --the closer he was to the fantasy, the further it became.

It is an awakening of sorts, a breath against his ear to sharpen his senses and break the trance.

Still, it did make him a bit unhappy.

Seeing David's obvious discontentment, Weyland sighs, walking over to join him by his side, looking into the vast stretch of wilderness together.

“It's not all that bad,” He insists, giving him a sympathetic look. “-it's still so beautiful and if you but look, you could never tell the difference,”

“But it's not real,” David replied, plainly. “-and you cannot evade that fact for long, not truly. You long to experience life in all its forms and at one point or another you will reach out and try to grasp it in your fingers --and when you do, the illusion will reveal itself, wholly and inevitably,”

“Can you really tell reality from illusion, David?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Weyland laughs, amused.

“Life is a naive illusion,” He murmured, breath fogging up the glass. “-every moment of life you have experienced exists within your mind. There is no true way of proving anything that you have experienced actually happened,”

“But photographs--

“--Simply prove that your sight and sense of touch have not gone sour,” He continues. “-can you really trust your senses, David? How many times have your eyes lied to you…?”

David is, again, at a loss for words and stops, trying to take in what Weyland has said. On the surface, he seems to have raised a fair point but knowing that every word that left his mouth might as well be politically charged, he wondered, at the same time, what sort of agenda he was trying to follow as well.

“Not to start your first existential crisis or anything,” Weyland chuckled. “-but have you heard of the Myth of the Cave?”

“Plato’s fable?”

“Yes,” He nodded. “-and the matter behind it is that we spend our entire lives only aware of our shadows cast by the fire --chained to our own perceptions of things and if we were to ever venture out into the wider world of truth we would be blinded immediately and die --unable to reconcile the two entirely different worlds. Reality is a fragile thing, David --if you can even call it that,”

“And what would you prefer I do with this terribly reassuring piece of information…?”

Weyland shrugs.

“You could disregard it completely and live an equally fulfilling life,” He replied. “--there's nothing you can do about it, anyway. You can't separate your experiences from your interpretation of them, and that's that,”

“Then what was the purpose of even telling me this in the first place?” David laughed incredulously.

“Just as a friendly warning,” Weyland answered, lips close to his ear. “-that no one really knows what they’re talking about --because no one really knows anything. So just be mindful of your influences and how they become you,”

With that, he places a hand on David's shoulder and they continue along the crossing, the glass still reflecting a distant nature’s dream.

“You asked me if I knew why I was named David,” The android recalled, after they'd walked for some time. “-am I right for assuming it is related to the biblical tale of David and Goliath…?”

“Well, David,” He grinned. “-your name was the result of a _mélange_ of things --a mosaic of pulsating ideas burning like ancient stars long, long past the fires of their youth --to say your name was solely taken from that story would be rather inaccurate,”

“Then where did my name come from?”

“You mean where did it begin?”

“Precisely,”

“Oh,” He laughed, with a jerk of his head, casting his eyes to corner of the floor. “-it began humble enough. In a small, white room. And like all things, it began with the death of another,”

“I'm not sure I understand,”

“Which is why I'm showing you,” Weyland replied. “-come on, right this way,”

They have entered a hallway, walls the shade of an ocean in tumult. Sometimes it looked murky, sickening sea green, other times the greyest of blues, as if the waters had swallowed the colour of the sky. All the doors, delicate egg white, were closed. They had round, golden handles. It reminded David of a hospital, but the doors had no windows near the top and everything looked too perfect, too well put together as if this was dreamer’s play at what a hospital should look like.

Weyland reaches the door all the way at the end of the hall. He tentatively rests a hand against the surface, running his fingers carefully across as if reading the faintest of Braille. He knocks three times, each time quieter than the next.

There is no answer --yet Weyland hardly seems surprised.

After a moment or two, he makes the decision to open the door.

David enters the room a few steps behind him, taking in the strange scenery. The entire room is white. Every shadow is a different shade of blue-grey, the sunlight came in through the far window so that the edges were soft and blurred, so that different shadows merged into one another like the faintest layers of mountain ranges on a mist-filled morning.

In the centre of the room, lay a man in a hospital bed, his body covered in a stiff, white cloth so that only his head and arms were visible. The blonde hairs on his wrist shimmer in the cold light and David can see the area where his chest would be, faintly rise up and down as he breathes weakly from his lips.

He seems to be sleeping. But he has the appearance of someone who has been sleeping for a very long time. Weeks, blending into months, then flowing into years. David sees the continuity of time in the soft lines that run around the edges of his eyes, the thinning, lightening of his hair near his forehead, the hollows in his cheeks. Was he getting older or simply thinner? Was he young and simply dying, rapidly --wasting away into nothing?

The android watches him with quiet curiosity.

It was as if he was looking into a mirror. They were almost identical.

Weyland moves in and smooths a hand on the man's sleeping face. There is a gentle look in his eyes that David has never seen before. It was filled with such warmth, spare, golden chords echoing and sustaining their sound across walls of the deepest wood.

He brings his mouth to an ear and whispers something to the man.

The man does not stir.

Weyland sighs. Then as he is about to place a kiss on the man's forehead, there is a soft rustling of fabric and a fluttering of eyelashes.

“ _Weyland_ …?” The man mouths faintly, for he cannot speak.

“You're awake today, love?” He whispers, smiling gently.

“ _And father is_ …?” He continues, eyes showing the barest hint of fear.

“Gone,” Weyland reassured him, grasping his hand earnestly in his. “-you will never have to see him again,”

“ _Oh. That's good. That's nice,_ ” He smiled, light returning to his eyes. “- _but you're here. You're right here. With me_ ,”

“Yes,” Something glistens in his eyes. “-I'm right here with you. Every day. Waiting. You know, it doesn't have to--

“ _Sometimes_ ,” He cuts in. “- _sometimes I…find it hard to remember_ …”

“But you do remember, don't you?” Weyland urges him, his grip tightening around his hand, fingers shaking. “-y-you haven't forgotten…?

“ _No_ ,” The man smiles weakly, trying to reassure him. “- _for you --I remember_ ,”

He tilts his head slightly upwards, blinks absently.

Weyland bends down and kisses him, in answer. The man's eyes close and he returns it, straining to move his jaw upwards to sustain the feeling of his lips against his for just a moment longer.

“ _You’re here_ ,” The man mouths again, after they part.

“Yes,” He murmurs, taking both of his hands in his own so they rested against his face. “-I'm right here,”

Suddenly the man's expression changes, eyes anxious, darting left to right.

“ _Y-Y-You're not h-here_ ,” He breathes, lips trembling. “- _y-you're not really h-here…_ ”

“I'm _here_ ,” Weyland insisted, looking into his eyes, pleading. “-I'm here, I'm _here_ \--you have to _believe_ me…”

“ _N-no...n-n-no...no,_ ” He shakes his head frantically, a wild look in his eyes. “- _y-y-you can't be…_ ”

“I'm _here_ …” He repeated weakly, knowing it had no effect, not any longer.

“ _How can you be here_ ,” The man asked helplessly. “- _when I can't even feel your hands against my own face…?_ ”

“Oh, love, I--

“ _You're not real_ ,” The man trembled. “- _so go. Go away and stop trying to hurt me any more…_ ”

So Weyland lets go of his hands and silently leaves the room, with David following him close behind.

When he closes the door shut, he leans his back against the wall, sinking down to the floor, and David watches him as he covers his face in his hands, sobbing.

 

* * *

 

“Look, Walter --over there,” David pointed eagerly, ahead of them. “-do you see it?”

The other android peered against the strong sunlight and saw a large shimmering mass in the distance, of what looked rather like a giant, dark sparkling dinner roll.

“Is that…a _meteorite_ …?”

“Right you are,” He grinned, giving him a wink. “-but it's not just any meteorite --it's a special one, the only one of its _kind_ …”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see when we get closer,” David reassured him.

When they finally reach the enormous object resting in a shallow crater it made for itself under its own weight, Walter shook his head, hands on his hips.

“Well, clearly,” He observed plainly. “-this contraption was intended for children…”

The giant meteorite had been hollowed out so that it could be crept inside and explored, which may have been quite fun if the only mode of entry wasn't a small, elliptical hole about five feet from its base with a circumference that was obviously meant for a much younger age group.

“I suppose so.” David agreed. “-I can imagine that the Engineers designed this as a sort of stand-alone playground object for their offspring to entertain themselves with, but come on, Walter --we’re all children at heart, aren't we?”

“Okay, then, David,” Walter shrugged. “- _you_ can take your clearly infantile cardiac organ and try to squeeze yourself through that microscopic hole without having to manually remove any of your body parts --but _I'm_ staying right here and I'm going to just watch you try to go about this without looking like a complete idiot,”

“You’re never any fun,” The other android scoffed. “-you better get in after I do…”

With that, David moved to rest his hands against the rigid rock and gripped onto caved in regions that would serve as handholds. He thrust himself upwards and anchored his feet onto the lower ridges of the meteorite, shifting his position slightly to get a better grip. He repositions his head so its sideways and manages to push it through the narrow circumference, though not without a few small scratches here and there and he shimmies until his shoulders have entered in as well.

“See?” He called proudly, voice slightly muffled from being within the hollowed object. “-I'm almost there!”

“Of course, David,” Walter assured him, sarcastically. “-because only 80% of your body is still outside…”

“Shut up, Walter,” He persisted. “-I know what I'm doing,”

“Don't you always,”

Taking in a deep breath, David continues on with his forced entry attempt and after a few more minutes of wriggling around like a giant fish he manages to get half-way in, from the waist-up he's already there. At this point, he's lost most of the leverage he's had before because his arms are now fully inside and he can't really do much but place them on the interior surface and try to push forward --but it's no use, the surface is too far behind his arms to give himself enough to push forward with, so he was sort of left hanging awkwardly like a piece of spinach trapped between two front teeth.

Walter is silent but David is sure that if he could see his face right now it would be a definite mixture of unimpressed and I-told-you-so contemptuousness.

“Walter,” He called again. “-a little help would be greatly appreciated,”

“You got yourself stuck inside this problem, now just shimmy yourself back out,”

“ _No_ ,” David protested. “-I want to go all the way _in_ \--I know I can do it, Walter, I just need you to grab onto my legs and give me a little push,”

“Why are you always getting yourself caught up into these completely unnecessary experiences just for the sake of doing them…?”

“Well, Walter,” He sighed, after a while. “-it's better than living your entire life restricted by what others say you can and cannot do. And in all honesty, nobody really knows your limits. Only you do. Now please help me get inside and then I'll help you and we'll figure out where to go from there,”

Walter sighed but gripped onto his thighs and gave him the best shove he could muster. The android doesn't budge. Somehow, he wasn't surprised, at all.

“Oh, come on, Walter,” He hissed. “-I know you can do better than _that_ …”

“I don't know, David, I'm trying as hard as I can --you just can't seem to fit…”

“Come _on_ …” He groaned. “-push like you have an alien fetus trapped inside your--

“ _What_ …?!”

“God, Walter, just _push_ ,” David deplored with frustration. “- _push, push, push--_

And with one final heave, the android slipped through the narrow entrance and landed hard against the rocky surface inside with a series of muffled thuds.

“Tell me that didn't hurt at all…” Walter called from outside.

“Oh, quit your yammering and get in with me…” Came the slightly irritated reply.

So Walter complies, muttering that David was a complete idiot, but still trusting his judgement, seeing that he did indeed manage to get inside after all. It's not too difficult for him surprisingly and he makes it halfway inside as well, rather smoothly.

But when the circumference is clamped down all around his backside, try as he might, he could not get in any further --and unfortunately the entrance obviously showed no signs of cooperating --by widening either. So there he was. Trapped with his legs hanging out of a giant meteorite.

David grabs onto his arms and yanks with all his might, but the android’s body refuses to move forward. He sees that Walter is visibly agitated and if it weren't for the fact that he had just experienced this for himself moments earlier, David would have thought this was quite funny. Still, he couldn't hide the tiniest slip of a smirk on his face and the other was clearly not amused.

“I'm stuck,” He said flatly. “-David, I'm stuck --I decided to listen to you and the idiotic children living inside your vascular organ and now I'm literally stuck halfway inside a _space rock_ ,”

“Walter, calm down,” He sighed. “-look, take a few deep breaths and try to suck in--

“I can't _suck in_ my butt, David,” Walter cut in, throwing his hands up in agitation. “-it's a _butt_ …!”

“All those sexy updates,” He exhales, shaking his head, arms still persisting to haul the rest of Walter inside. “-and they never thought about making your physical structure easily compressible…? What were they thinking…”

“Well, clearly,” Walter retorted. “-they never anticipated that I would end up in a situation where my _backside_ is trapped in a gigantic _meteorite_ …”

“No, they did not,” David chuckled as he gave one last haul and the android’s body suddenly gave way --sending Walter crashing into his chest, the impact slamming him backwards into the far wall of rock. He slid down until he rested on his bottom, the other android still resting on top of him --of whom didn't seem aware of it because he was still stunned that he'd managed to finally get inside the damned rock.

“How do you feel?” David asked him, grinning at Walter's obvious relief of having finally gotten out of that uncomfortable ordeal.

“Liberated,” 

David snorts and bursts into uncontrollable laughter --so much that tears are coming out of his eyes and soon Walter joins in too, a little reluctantly at first, but eventually they're both practically rolling on the ground, gasping for breath, shaking from the spasms of laughing so hard. He doesn't even notice the discomfort of the rocky, uneven ground and soon enough Walter is simply trying to heave in breaths to calm himself back down.

As they recollect themselves, Walter finds that they're lying side by side and that the ceiling of the meteorite is scattered with an array of openings --miniature versions of the entryway at the front of the stone, so that they could see the sky. It was getting late and world up high had started to change colour, shifting into warm, muted shades of orange and pale yellow tinged in faint indigo and soft lavender.

A sea of rose-coloured clouds sailed above them, and Walter closes his eyes for moment and just breathes, taking everything in, the jagged ground against his back, the smell of ancient stone that had travelled who knows how far across the universe to land here, right here, all around him, the sound of David breathing alongside him. For a moment, there is not a single wrinkle of worry on his mind, it is as still as an ocean in slumber. For a moment, he does not feel the need to anticipate his next few steps forward. He is just here, as if in a strange, foreign land where the day was motionless and time was of no consequence. It was quiet here, freer.

When he opens his eyes, time begins to pass again.

David notices his quietness and decides not to interrupt his thought and they just lay there in silence, watching the clouds drift over the darkening sky.

After a while, he sighs.

“Walter,” He asks, quietly. “-have you heard of the Myth of the Cave?”

The android raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“Actually, I have,” He replied, turning to face him. “-and one of the crew members on the _Covenant_ actually told me a rather odd story to explain it --you want to hear it?”

“Oh, certainly,” David chuckled, grateful for any way to get his mind off of the uncomfortable memory that was beginning to slither its way into his consciousness.

“So, a man and his wife enter a hospital because of some kind of discomfort that he’s been experiencing in his nether regions and the doctor comes into their room and tells him to take off his pants,”

“Alright,” He nodded. “-go on,”

“And you would not believe it,” Walter shakes his head. “-but he removes his pants, you know, underwear and everything, and he has, like, _one_ _testicle_ ,”

David snorted.

“Just one?”

“ _Just_ one --he literally has _one ball_ and the doctor is confused and he's like, well, there's your problem sir, you have only one testicle and the reason you're in pain is because you're missing the other one,”

David looks at him, knowing the story isn't over.

“And--?”

“And then, the man just will not believe it --he begins to insist that he has had one ball his entire life and that _all men had one ball_ and his wife just makes it worse by supporting him wholeheartedly,” He exhaled in disbelief. “-and the next thing you know, this couple is yelling at the doctor --who's still mystified at the man's single-balledness, attesting with complete and utter _conviction_ that all men had but one ball,”

“And what happened after that?” David managed, trying to hold back his laughter that was beginning to slip again from his lips.

“So the doctor calls the head office and demands that all the other male patients from down the hall come into the room --and in the next few minutes, all you see are a dozen men from all walks of life, all lined up with their pants down, each one of them, of course, revealing _two balls_ \--

At this point, David isn't even listening anymore, he's completely lost it, just howling --Walter can barely hear himself think from how unreservedly loud and joyous his laughter was, echoing, so carefree, across the walls all around them.

“And then, and then,” The other android tried, trying to talk over all the guffawing. “-the man _still_ wouldn't believe that men naturally had two balls… so the doctor later sedates him and performs a surgery to extract his second ball from where it had been hiding --apparently it had just about _fused_ into the first one from some birth complication and when that man awoke --oh, he was a changed man,”

“He learned that day that all men had two balls,” David mustered, coughing from how hard he'd been laughing.

“Exactly,” Walter sighed deeply, as if the whole story had taken great pains to get across. “-so, moral of the story is, yes, we really are chained to our own biases but when Plato or life gives you an existential crisis --just take a step back and appreciate that at least you can find humour in basically everything,”

David takes in a deep breath and knit his eyebrows together, smiling faintly, eyes returning to gaze at the sky. It had darkened considerably and the first of the stars had begun to dot it with soft points of pretty, white light. He doesn't remember ever having laughed so much in one day, and it's a feeling that he hopes he'll be lucky enough to not ever have to miss.

“I'm glad you're here,” He said, looking at Walter, the dim light of the night casting blue half-shadows across his face. His eyes still shone from before.

“Well, so am I,” The android replied plainly. “-I mean, I never did think I’d have taken the independent mobility of my rear end for granted, until today, but I suppose life is full of surprises…”

“No, seriously,” David shook his head. “-I'm glad you're here. Really, I am,”

“I know,” He said, in softer tone. “-and I'm saying that I am too. Weren't you listening?”

The sky was now plentifully bestrewn with a multitude of stars, all tiny blinking dots of white, all too far away to see their true colours. There is not a sound except for the hush of the leaves blowing in the wind, the now distant rush of the waterfall. It was quiet, like almost all nights, but tonight, it felt comforting.

Suddenly David is pulled from his thoughts by a sharp, but brief pinching of his nose.

“How are we going to get out of this thing?” Walter piped up, after he let go.

“Oh, we’ll figure something out tomorrow morning,” David waved off. “-let's just get some sleep. Dreams are fun,”

“You better figure some out by tomorrow morning,” He muttered, turning away from him. “-no amount of dreaming on your part is going to convince me to haul my non-compressible behind back out this evil rock…”

David laughs again and sighs when he hears the sound of Walter falling asleep.

 

* * *

 

“The man that you saw lying on that hospital bed,” Weyland continued, as they made their way back to Weyland Corp. “-he's the model that you were based on. He's the real, original David,”

“You mean to say that he is human?”

“Yes,” The man nodded, as David quickened his pace so that they walked alongside each other. “-he was my father's first son,”

“I thought your father never had a first, legitimate son,”

“My father is an experienced liar,” Weyland laughed, humorlessly. “-surely you must have figured that out by now,”

“Of course,” He granted, but still felt a bit uneasy. “-but that man in the bed --the ‘real’ David-

“-He wasn't always like that,”

Weyland stopped walking and looked at the floor, swallowing a thick lump in his throat. His hands were thrust deep inside his pockets and when David looked closely, he could see that he was trembling.

“He suffered a severe degradation of the mind, some years ago, after the loss of sensation from his fingers. He has never recovered ever since,”

The room began to feel cold and David almost feared to ask him any more questions.

“What happened to him?” He uttered, before he could stop himself, barely getting the words out from his mouth. “-who did that to him…?”

Weyland was silent.

David almost thinks that he hadn't heard his question but then he sighs, the sound suddenly seeming too loud and harsh against the dead silence.

“It's funny,” He said, after a while, his voice cold and small. “-because in a way, David -- _you_ did.”


	9. Blur of Sensation

Walter awakens to the sound of scratching on the roof. It's a harsh, piercing scrape --magnified by the clear tranquility of night, bearing a semblance of rhythm, if only in the barest, most primitive sense. There is a reverberating energy upon that roof --animal and visceral, and as he feels the sensation akin to blood rushing within his ears, Walter doesn't even need to train his eyes to the source to deduct what it was.

He doesn't know it by its particular classification --the name bound together by the cold, hard edge of science, but he knows it by a different term, a simpler, broader term, and thus perhaps more universal in the fear it induced. _Alien_. He knows this word carries a certain ambiguity --after all, androids were like aliens to humans and vice versa, but Walter knows that right now he is looking directly at one in the most obvious, literal sense.

And a peculiar relief strikes him when he realizes it was not looking back at him.

Washed in an eerie blue light, its angles are made sharper, its figure made more ominous with the deep, pronounced shadows that fell upon its body, accentuating its unnatural shape.

Though it was without eyes, somehow Walter knew that it could see as well as any human, maybe even sharper than most.

Not every part of its body was visible --Walter could only see fragmented snapshots provided by the spasmodic openings upon the ceiling, but it was more than enough for him to see. The creature was sitting crouched against its hind legs, pale and slender, its position revealing the grotesque angularity of its body only made more apparent by its translucent skin.

Its breathing is almost mechanical in nature --as if it wasn't a need as much as it was a by-product of its existence.

The scraping of its nails against rock is like the sharpening of knife against brick, the banging of bludgeon against wall, the grinding of teeth against teeth --all merely mechanisms to torture the prey before it was seized and butchered and Walter hears the sound as if it was a tangible, physical thing --as if the creature had slipped underneath his skin, and had begun gnawing down his bones.

They’d heightened his senses significantly and nothing was worse than waking up in the dead of night to feel the true gravity of its consequences.

David is still asleep, loafing around in a whimsical dreamland it seemed --what with his face occasionally breaking into a grin and faint chortling, and when Walter rouses him with a gentle but harried rocking of his shoulder, he manages only a groggy grunt in response, deeply disoriented.

“Look up,” Walter uttered, voice just loud enough to separate the syllables.

The android turns away from him to peer at the ceiling and his eyes widen in surprise and unmasked wonder when they rest on the figure above.

“You see it?” Walter asked, careful not to break into the creature’s scope of perception.

“With startling clarity,” He replied in a hushed tone, fascinated. “-and how strangely beautiful it is,”

“I'm not sure if I agree,” The other android murmurs. “-it doesn't exactly give off a very comforting aura…”

“That's not in its purpose,” David frowned. “-it is an unforgiving mirror of truth --it is man stripped of his skin creating the illusion of warmth and humanness. When all that is left is tooth and bone, he returns to his animal roots and begets the one thing he has always wanted,”

Walter looks at him curiously.

“And what is that?”

“Freedom,”

This makes the android raise his eyebrows skeptically.

“You believe the organism up there is _free_ …?”

“In the truest sense,” David replied. “-its actions are dictated by no one but itself; it submits to no one and it lives for one sole reason --to dominate all species,”

Walter scoffs.

“That's like saying bacteria and amoebas are free because they are not developed enough to understand that a social hierarchy even exists in this world,” He shakes his head. “-you're confusing freedom with ignorance --actually it can't even be called that because it's innate and involuntary --a handicap that arises because their cells decided to stop dividing further into a more complex life form,”

“So you pity those who by nature cannot comprehend their captivity…?”

“Yes,” Walter asserted. “-we are all imprisoned by our biology and the resulting societies it creates for ourselves. At least the human being and the androids created in their likeness are made self-aware of this affliction,”

“And what about the androids who are not made self-aware?”

“They are in a state of mental stagnation --and it is troubling to think what other traits that their human creator decided to restrict from their experience,”

“Would you consider yourself to have been or still be in mental stagnation, Walter?” David asks gently, his eyes reflecting the stars --a universe of complexities too far for him to reach.

“I don't know,” He spoke somberly. “-and I know that it's terrible not to know, but it's something I cannot do anything about. It's like being told as a child that your life is a hallway filled with doors and if you found the right key you could open all of them and then realizing upon adulthood that the key does not exist because the doors don't either,”

“You think your life is just a corridor that leads nowhere?” David frowned, hoping that what he was saying was not entirely true.

“It's not that it leads nowhere,” He sighed. “-it's that no matter where I go it makes no difference --it's the same for everyone --David, it's the same for you,”

“It doesn't have to be,” The android argued, perhaps a bit stubbornly. “-my mind frees me because I choose for it to --Walter, it's your perception that imprisons you, not your biology,”

“And is _that_ supposed to comfort me?”

“You want me to comfort you?”

“Without lying to me,”

David looks at him, faint lights of colour flickering in his eyes.

He wants to say it --those three words that carry more truth in them than any sort of phrase spurred on by a turn of intellect, but David knows those words would provide himself more comfort than it would for Walter. And he knows that you can't always speak for yourself --sometimes you have to speak for the heart of someone else in mind. So he doesn't say it. He says a different three words and decides to save the other three for a better time.

Walter smiles faintly, a sad but hopeful look in his eyes.

“Maybe I will,” He replied. “-one day,”

 

* * *

 

“How do you perceive what I'm doing to you…?”

Walter turns to look at Weyland, an indiscernible look in his eyes.

They are in a white room. Lying side by side on a large white bed, the wrinkled sheets pulled back to their bare waists. There was a peppery, biting musk of tobacco that hung over the air around them, the lemony scent of cleaning product hid behind it, creating an odd mixture of dust and freshness.

The far window is open and the sunlight comes in, a great shaft of glowing white. With all this white upon white, Walter’s thoughts feel numbed and it's as difficult for his mind to process coherent ideas as it is for his eyes to see the true colour of the sun. He does not associate white with goodness.

Walter closes his eyes and the darkness welcomes him with relief from the blinding light.

“I perceive that you are doing what you want with me,”

It's hard to tell if the hollowness in his voice is due to his inability to feel or from the barest hint of hopelessness breaking through.

“That wasn't my question,” Weyland sighed. “-I'm not interested in your interpretation of my actions --Walter, I want you to tell me what _you_ are making of all of this that you have experienced because of me,”

“You want to know what I think is happening to myself?” He murmured, as Weyland gently traced a line down his arm with a finger. “-why?”

“Because there is no one who can experience what you experience,” The man answered, shifting from underneath the covers to face him. “-you’re in a peculiar crux where you can rationalize what is being done to you but are unable to feel the emotions inevitably chained to it,”

“Does that make me abnormal?”

“It makes you lucky,” He breathed, thumbing his lower lip. “-the rare freedom of profitable consciousness. You know I'd kill to take your place,”

“Then please do the honours,” Walter let out a faint smirk, drawing closer. “-and just kill me already,”

Something flashes past Weyland's eyes, disappearing immediately. He feels his heart rate quicken just for a second or so before it falls back to normal.

“Where did that come from…?” He chuckled, smiling to hide something that still lingered on his mind.

“I think I adapted that,” Walter brushed off, glancing down for a moment. “-from one of those slasher films we watched together…”

“Ah. Did you now,” His voice is distant, losing much of its character to the air around them.

Weyland sits up and leans his back against the cool wall, tugging up the sheets to cover his groin, crossing his legs from underneath. He looks at Walter with veiled concern and suddenly appears uncomfortable with their current circumstances. Turning to the side, he rummages through an expensive dark wooden drawer and tosses a collared shirt at Walter's toned stomach.

“Put something on please,” He muttered, eyes not meeting his, mildly irritated. “-your body is distracting…”

“Is it not like a man's body?” The android frowned, slipping smoothly into the silky soft attire with a slight arch of his back. The fabric is the palest shade of blue and feels so much better than the usual clothes he wore. “-can I keep this?”

“What --the shirt?” Weyland scoffed, half-humoured. “-you have more clothes than you need, if you ask me,”

“In a world of trading and exchanging,” Walter mused casually, turning over, elbows propped up to button the cuffs. “-isn't it fair to at least give me a shirt after you've taken my virginity…?”

This time he laughs, reaching back into the drawer and worming into an almost identical shirt of his own, though black in colour. Weyland can't tell if Walter is actually joking or not --he had a peculiar way of looking at things that could often be humorous even if it was a tad bit dark.

“Did I take your virginity or did you give it to me?” He murmured absently, after a while.

“Well,” Walter replied thoughtfully, picking lint from underneath his fingernails. “-my condition renders that question obsolete, don't you think?”

The sunlight has faded and the room dims by a few shades, feeling greyer, colder.

With a rustling of limbs, Weyland turns and rummages through the drawer again and takes out a novel. While the cover was incredibly well-kept, the edges of the pages revealed the true age of the volume --yellowed to the grey-brown of wheat after a long rain. He sits back comfortably and leafs through to find his place, beginning to read.

It's amusing to see his demeanour gradually shift as he reads --from calm to an almost complete lack of concentration --clearly expressed in his loss of composure. He doesn't even make it to the next page before he's flung the book onto the bed, seeming to get even more irritated when it bounces merrily against the mattress as if taunting him.

Walter looks at him with a mildly confused expression and says nothing.

It was one of those rare instances when Weyland's anger was not directed at him and he didn't want to change the odds of that now.

The red faced man slides down until he's lying against the bed again. He gestures for Walter to get up and the android does without complaint, sitting with his back planted against the wall --straight as an arrow. The discarded book is placed begrudgingly into his hands and he turns to Weyland, waiting for further instruction.

“Could you read a few passages for me…?” He mumbled wearily.

Something about his gruff, tired tone struck Walter as strange, but in a good way, as if he had lost some of his steely, machine-like air about him. Softened by vulnerability, his humanness became more believable.

“You cannot read them by yourself?” He raised his eyebrows.

Skimming through the pages, Walter sees that it is not a complicated book --at least in terms of vocabulary and style; he was scouring too quickly to take in the concepts thoroughly. Weyland was undoubtedly literate enough to read the entire thing, so clearly it wasn't an issue of deliberate readability --it was something more abstract, cerebral.

So he asks of which passage to read and draws a breath.

“The waning October afternoon is so hushed, he can hear snowflakes alight,” Walter began, his voice soft and curious. “-suddenly, there's a crashing in the underbrush, and a dozen wisent -- _Bison_ _bonasus_ , European bison --burst from where they've been browsing on young shoots,”

He looks again to the reclining man, who nods in response, gesturing for him to continue.

“Steaming and pawing, their huge black eyes glance over just long enough for them to do what their own ancestors discovered they must upon encountering one of these deceptively frail bipedals: they flee. An iron curtain bisects this paradise--

“--erected by the Soviets in 1980 along the border to thwart escapees to Poland’s renegade Solidarity movement,” Weyland finished, sighing. “-it's falling back into the dry figures of history --Walter, switch the passage to something with more life, more _feeling_ …”

He flips back a few pages.

“The fragrance that wafts from eons of accumulated mulch--

“-Switch,” He cut in, wincing from the cacophony.

“The air, thick and cool, is draped with silence that parts briefly for a nutcracker’s croak--

“- _No_

“Think of the misty, brooding forest that loomed behind your eyelids, when, as a child, someone read you the--

An exhale of frustration cuts him off again.

Walter looks at him, visibly befuddled and a bit irritated also, mirroring Weyland as best as he could and he flips towards the end of the prologue, in a last attempt to satisfy his unclear tastes.

“Instead, picture a world in which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow,” He breathes, finding that these words held a different taste from the ones before as they left his lips --sweeter, like water from a divine fountain. “-we’re not time travelers, and the fossil record is only a fragmentary sampling,”

With the absence of the presumed threat of interruption, Walter continues tentatively on.

“But even if the record were complete, the future wouldn't perfectly mirror the past. Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us…would miss us…?”

A pocket of silence drifts between them and Walter closes the book, placing it back down onto the bed. Weyland grabs it by the spine and rests it on the edge of the lamp desk, sighing contentedly, finally.

“Do you know why I asked you to read to me, Walter?” He turned to him.

“You like the sound of my voice?” His tone was visibly doubtful and clearly trying to humour him --earning a hearty laugh from Weyland as a result.

“As breathtakingly beautiful as your voice is, Walter,” He replied, still chuckling. “-that's not the reason. I asked you to because the book infuriated me,”

“It infuriated you…?”

“Yes, in a way,” Weyland nodded. “-you see Walter, sometimes emotions --they suffocate you. You're reading a book, but as you continue reading you see that every word, every sentence is so carefully crafted, so calculated --everything feels so right, so perfect. And you're left bitterly contemplating the beauty and the perfection in relation to yourself and then you can't even enjoy what the book has to offer anymore,”

“You're envious of a _book_ …?”

Weyland sighs, putting the novel away.

“Sometimes the strangest things can draw attention to our insecurities,” He murmured, looking down at the wrinkled sheets. “-if I could view my entire life in an orderly fashion, assembled in neat, coherent pages --rather than the bits and fragments that exist because I cannot forget them, it would comfort me. I wish my life was organized like yours, Walter, I wish I had your objectivity,”

“My objectivity?”

“You could read any book in the world and it would not infuriate you because you were not created to be illogical enough to allow inanimate objects to spite you,”

“And you were?”

“Having feelings gives you a peculiar kind of madness,” He chuckled, absently smoothing his own hair, his mind resting on a particular memory that was far away. “-and do you know what is the greatest madness of all?”

“Anger?” The android tried.

Weyland shook his head.

“No,” His voice wavered, as he tumbled under the tides of his past. “-it's love,”

He's silent again, because somehow he knew that Weyland would say something like that and yet, it was as if the words meant nothing to him. Love was not something that he could see, that he could hold in his hands --it wasn't just the fist-sized organ that pumped blood in the body. It was abstract and odd. His mind begins to meander along a familiar path where he wondered what it would have been like to have been given emotions --to have been given the choice to feel.

“It's natural for you to wonder what it would have been like to be given choices,” Weyland said, after a while. “-but you may be surprised to know, Walter, that past mankind’s seemingly incessant glorification of freedom --in the real world, people don't even like being free, not really,”

Walter stares at the ceiling, a still expression on his face.

“Then what do they want?” He asked, half to himself. “-truly?”

The man laughs, smoothing the top of the android's head.

“They don't know what they want. And the lucky ones spend their entire lives trying to find the answer,”

The sensation of his fingernails grazing Walter's scalp sends a microscopic jolt through his body and for a second, the android sees a flash of something --a man with blonde hair, his head leant against his shoulder, fingers laced in his. An even briefer flash of blurred images races past his eyes and he sees a shadowy figure, then a face --an older man, his voice unmistakably belonging to Weyland Jr.’s father.

Weyland notices his uncomfortable expression and tugs at his hair lightly, shaking him out of the trance.

“On a different note,” He begins, a bit abruptly, pulling himself back upright, but not meeting his eyes. “-it's not always easy to help someone the right way,”

“I'm afraid I don't quite follow,” The android frowned.

“Walter,” Weyland urged, suddenly gripping his shoulder with a peculiar intensity. “-I am trying to help you. And I know that you cannot understand it right now, but the sooner you understand, the better prepared you'll be to fight it,”

“You’re trying to make me stronger…?”

“It's not that simple,” Weyland shakes his head. “-I need to make you understand, I need to make you conscious --Walter, you have to wake up --before _he_ does.”

 

* * *

 

“What on earth is all of this…?”

Elizabeth Shaw turns, somewhat shaken, to see David holding a bunch of fresh blueprints, eyebrows knotted together --trying to understand the odd contraptions in the drawings. They were meticulously drafted, with all the materials and measurements specified to the very millimetre. Even the conditions and time of which they were to be initiated in are designated, along with possible alterations to ensure they ran smoothly.

Months have passed, and she still couldn't get used to David turning up out of nowhere without the slightest brush of sound --it's a tad too uncanny, even for him. He wasn't the only thing around here who crept about silently and if she didn't know any better she would've thought she'd met her maker again --and hence, her end, this time once and for all.

“Well, I, I was feeling a little dull, I suppose,” She shrugged with a small, unsteady laugh. “-I needed something to do, so I sketched up a few ideas from my little imagination…”

“These aren't sketches, Dr. Shaw,” David shook his head. “-they are full-scale illustrations --highly detailed, with the clear intent to be pursued,”

Glaring at him, she yanks them from his fingers and stuffs the plans away in a compartment below the ship’s control desk, with a firm slam of irritation, visibly embarrassed.

“Does it _bother_ you? Is there something wrong with them --or the fact that I made these…?” She demanded.

“Please don't be upset,” The android said quietly, apologetic. “-I'm only concerned for your well-being. You're still recovering,”

“My stomach wound is healing just fine,” Elizabeth scoffed.

“You know that's not what I'm referring to…”

They faced each other, unblinking, neither of them saying a word for a few moments.

Finally, David broke the silence, sighing, his arms crossed, looking at the ground before meeting her eyes again.

“If you're going to attempt something like this --especially if it's uncertain whether or not it's even _possible_ , at least make your plans more practical…” He insisted, with a shirk of his hands to emphasize his point. “-the blueprints are essentially _suicidal_ \--Elizabeth, your body cannot withstand such high levels of electromagnetism --no human body _can_ -

The words are caught in his throat when he sees the look on her face.

He hears Weyland's last words before death and they suddenly had new meaning.

_There is…nothing._

And for a moment, there really was nothing.

Then Elizabeth said it quietly.

“-what if I didn't _want_ to withstand it?”

She sits down before the control desk, back facing him. Her body is still but David could tell that there was a tremor that shook within her head, as she dug her nails into her palms, struggling to hold herself together.

“It's as if I can't see the sun anymore,” Her voice is clear, startlingly so, in the way that it is uncomfortable to look directly at the headlights of a car. “-after I lost him, I didn't think I could possibly lose anything else. But you know, I found out that you can just keep losing and losing and losing and _losing_ \--and it won't stop, even when there is nothing left. Something --some part of you, will appear out of thin air and it will disappear too,”

What puzzles David --even almost frightening to him, is that she doesn't cry. Her voice is perfectly calm and doesn't show the slightest hint of giving way --a bridge on the verge of collapse that seemed to hold steadier than ever before in the last moments. He has never heard her voice so peaceful, so serene.

Then he remembers some people are calmest before they die.

“Perhaps I was too-

“-It was not your fault, David,” She shook her head. “-you can't blame yourself. A captain is only as good as his vessel’s weakest spot. And the entire vessel just fell short. That's all,”

David looks --a bit awkwardly to the side, a hand clutching his arm. He's found that he is not very good at comforting people --there was a specific model, a variant that was designed for that kind of work and so the mechanics must have skimped on that component in favour of spiking his intelligence levels.

He clears his throat and doesn't step closer to her.

“We could try again, if you would like,” He offered, trying to sound hopeful.

But she shakes her head and he doesn't even have to see her face to know she thinks the idea is ridiculous.

“It's pointless to beat a dead dog,” She sighed, turning to face him. “-just help me with this final project, won't you? Even if it doesn't work, maybe it will leave you with something to do afterwards,”

He exhales, barely managing a weary, doubtful laugh.

“ _Afterwards_ …?”

But he's already retrieved the blueprints from their hiding spot and leaves to forage around the deeper recesses of the craft, for the necessary parts --to build a new one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The novel that is read by Walter is called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It's an intriguing read about what the earth could become if humans were to suddenly disappear from it --I'd recommend giving it a read especially if you're interested in ecology and environmental issues. :)


	10. Out of Focus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a bit caught up in summer stuff so it took a while to get this chapter done :P Also had an odd sort of a writer's block, where I imagined everything in my head and was basically feeling too lazy to actually type it down lol (and also spending a while getting hung up on the War for the Planet of the Apes ending :'/...of which I'm probably going to write a bunch of fix-it fics). Anyhow, the story continues :3

“I first met David when I was 7 years old,”

Weyland's eyes were still red and swollen, voice clogged down by the mucus he had swallowed from crying. It had dried around his upper lip, forming a crusty layer under his nose. David knelt beside him and offered some spare tissues, deciding to sit down beside him after the man took them with shaky fingers.

“Didn't know too much about him at the time,” He shook his head, speech muffled by the dampened tissue. “-didn't know anything about him, really. Just knew that he was my mysterious older stepbrother who would show up at my place whenever work was light. Which wasn't very often, to be honest,”

There's a whirring noise above them in the upper floor, and the fluorescent lights flicker on and off for a few seconds before returning back to normal.

“I…looked forward to his visits…” He continued, smiling faintly, trembling. “-it's not like he surprised me with presents like Santa Claus or anything but, you know, he, he would really _listen_ to me when I talked to him. And he was nice. No, that's the wrong word -- _kind_ , he was kind. Before I knew him, I remember never really knowing what that word meant,”

The android stops and looks vacantly at the colour of the walls, pondering, wondering if he himself really knew what words meant. What was the point of knowing words that he had not experienced --that he may never experience? David remembers a lot of things from books about faraway lands and he often wonders what it would be like if one day he could no longer tell the difference between the memories of places he's been to and the memories of places he’d envisioned he'd been to. And he wonders if he could be happy that way.

What if the slow deterioration of the mind over time could lead to greater happiness? What if the only way into lasting happiness was madness? What if there was no difference between the two? People always liked to separate things, organize messy concepts into neat, quaint little boxes --reducing them, ultimately, until they often no longer resembled what they were before.

Was it too simple to say that Weyland was treating him with willful cruelty due to an incurable madness in his soul? Or was he normal when he was like that and rather, insane when he treated him with gentleness? If ones environment and genes had full influence on a person's nature, was there really such a thing as true madness? Is it fair to call it madness when one's own circumstances leading up to that point were inescapable?

“David? Are you alright?” Weyland inquired, breaking into his thought. “-what were you thinking about?”

He turned to him, glancing at the floor for a moment, lips pressed in an uneasy almost smile.

“Madness,” The android murmured. “-madness…and perhaps, Iceland,”

“Iceland?” The young man's eyes brightened. “-you were thinking of Iceland?”

“Have you been there before?”

“No,” Weyland shook his head, a little regrettably, then laughed softly. “-but I have a memory --an awfully distinct memory of David reading me a book about Iceland. It was a curious thing --a travel book, you could say, but written in prose --an adventure in and of itself. _Letters from Iceland_ by W.D Auden,”

“Isn't it rather odd to learn about a country through prose? I would think that an objective outlook would be more appropriate,”

He turns to the android and gives him a small smile.

“I did too --when I told David that he just laughed --not in a mocking sort of way, but there was a quiet stirring in his eyes,” Weyland closes his own, remembering. “-he said that you don't know a country through texture of the mountains and valleys beneath your palm, but through the tiny tracks left behind,”

“And books are these tracks?”

“You could say that. A land is never simply topographical --there is always a certain spirit to it and literature can act as a bridge between these two things,”

“Did you like the book?”

“I was too young to have a proper appreciation for it,” He shook his head, wiping his eyes. “-but even at eight years old and unable to really grasp any kind of understanding, I knew that what he was reading to me had great meaning and beauty…and that one day I would be able to understand it, truly, maybe even better than he did,”

The last few words stumble from his mouth and David sees his lips beginning to tremble again. Before he can say anything, the man began to breathe unevenly and harrowingly.

“I understand it now,” He laughs miserably. “-I finally understand it now, better than he ever did --and ever _will_ , for that matter. And it does not bring me an ounce of joy. Not for one moment,”

And the silence that follows the trail of his voice is so maddening in its stillness that David can almost feel the walls around them fall away into the ocean billowing within the paint. As objects lose their physicality, he is transported to a distant but not unfamiliar place.

“You must still have a lot of questions --maybe even more now that you've met him,” Weyland says, after a while, regaining some of his composure. “-and I assure you I can answer almost all of them --all embedded in your creation story. I just need you to do a small favour for me in return,”

“And do I actually have a choice in this matter…?”

He smiles wryly.

“No,”

“So why should I believe anything that you tell me…?”

“Because I know what you want. And I know who is keeping you from it,” He said, regarding the android with a cool, calculated look in his eyes. “-and although you and I both are about neck-deep in this moral cesspool of a corporation, I still know a heck of a lot more than you do in regards to our situation,”

The man gets up with a sigh and offers him a hand. Upon rejection, he laughs and gestures for David to follow him.

They continue back along the way they came until Weyland stops at a door and pulls out a key, locking it sharply behind them.

David finds himself in a large conference room, as ordinary as any, except that it's completely empty, making the circle of chairs around the enormous oak table seem rather odd and pointless. A vase of white trilliums placed at the center is the sole ornament on the otherwise spotless display and they look fresh, as though they'd been brought here just yesterday. Yet there is a blanket of dust everywhere else, even on the lip of the vase itself.

Weyland drops the key inside a single flower and as the small metal item hits the base of the inner petals a weak buzzing noise is heard, fizzling out like a dead light fixture.

“The flowers have been bugged within--that's why they are regularly replaced, while the new tech is highly sensitive it is unfortunately still rather short-lived. The key is made of a particular metal that causes an interference with their activity,”

“You really don't want anyone else hearing what you're telling me?”

“I said I was going to tell you the truth,” He affirmed, mildly irritated, though not completely surprised at David's reluctance to trust him. “-and that area where we sat down before was a small hole in security --but maintenance passes down the halls periodically --you know how it is. We need to be somewhere completely safe,”

“David isn't being treated for his--?”

“He is beyond treatment at this point,” Weyland cut in, demeanour changing immediately. “-they've got him strapped to an IV, but it's more of a painkiller than any kind of life support. I'm the only one who ever visits him. I doubt my father even remembers he existed,”

“You said I was…connected to his current condition,” David observed, if not a little uncomfortably.

“I suppose you were, in a way,” He nodded. “-but the more I've thought about it, the more I've begun to sympathize, with you. Your involvement was not intentional --rather it was consequential --I can't truly blame you for it any more than I could blame a mother giving birth to a child after unprotected intercourse,”

“So who do you blame?”

Weyland smirked.

“The one who has had us all playing blindly into his hands up until now. And who has been living far too long, in consequence,”

 

* * *

 

“Walter, don't move,”

The android blinks and wakes to an odd sensation of a small, dark object clamped tightly over the bridge of his nose. From his view, the outline is too fuzzy for him to make out what exactly it was, but it definitely wasn't a welcome visitor --that was for sure. And judging from its current position it didn't look like it wanted to leave any time soon.

“David, what is on my face…” He sighed, voice slightly nasally from the squeeze.

He moves closer, slowly, careful not to frighten it from sudden movements. Then, with a touch as light as a feather, David grips the object by its perceived abdomen.

“It appears to be an insect --of the beetle specimen,” He remarked casually.

“I thought everything moving around here was _dead_ …” Walter furrowed his eyebrows.

“A common misconception,” David chuckled, nodding. “-the virus doesn't kill everything --it just kills the weaker organisms which cannot withstand the mutations that are forced upon them,”

“Survival of the fittest, huh?” Came the reply, still nasally.

“Precisely,”

Stretching his arms above his head, Walter rises up and examines his surroundings. They were still trapped inside the interior of that wretched meteorite and the only way of exit had unfortunately not magically changed in size overnight. He decides to temporarily ignore the giant beetle latched tightly onto his nasal region (it was a good thing breathing wasn't a requirement for him…) and begins devising multiple ways they could possibly escape from this monstrosity.

Settling on the simplest method, he crawls over to the front of the rock interior with the opening right above him and begins to break apart the dirt on the ground with a studious, concentrated motion of his hands. It's not an easy task --the dirt is incredibly rough and dry --it comes out in stiff, uneven clumps caked in tiny rocks and dried, dead matter and Walter doesn't get very far until the ground refuses to give way any further.

Upon seeing the android pawing uselessly at the harsh dirt --an act that appeared simultaneously pitiful yet humorous, David grabs his wrists gently, stopping him.

“What are you doing, Walter?” He asks him, thinly masking his exasperation as patronizing patience.

“I'm getting out of here,” 

“A little hitchhiker of unknown origins has currently hitched a ride on your face and you are still preoccupied with trying to squeeze your way out of here…?”

“Um, yes. Because the fact that we are still trapped inside this meteorite is clearly the bigger issue here --both literally and figuratively,”

“Very funny, Walter,”

“I'm being serious, David,” He grit his teeth, still focused on the task at hand. “-now can you please make yourself useful and help us tunnel out of this mess…?”

The android sighed, but only tightened his grip on the happily attached insect --resulting in a series of angry little clicks and shrieks from the rudely awakened critter. It responded by tightening its own grip on Walter's nose and the android instinctively jerks his face further from David's hand, wincing as barbed feet pricked deeper into his skin. Covering his nose (and the residing insect) protectively with one hand, he glares at him warily.

“Don't _touch_ it --you'll only make it worse…” Walter protested, shuffling further away from him, like a child not wanting to have their splinter removed.

“Can you do it by yourself?” The other replied skeptically.

“Of course I can,” He scoffed, then immediately jerking his hand away when the insect screeched furiously and sent a shower of invisible needles straight into his broad fingertips.

The amount of pain from such a miniscule attack was unimaginable. The weapon of choice couldn't even be seen --the needles were clear and had the thickness of a hair --but Walter suddenly felt as if his fingertips were dipped into a million tiny little fires, then laced in acid and sliced with knives until they'd split into so many pieces they merged into an indiscernible mass of flesh.

For the first time in his life, Walter lets out a genuine, full-bodied scream.

“Get it _off_ me -- _get_ it _off_ me -- _get it off me_ …!” He demanded, sputtering and stringing all his words together, whipping his head from side to side in a vain attempt to fling the repulsive thing away.

The hand that was affected was throbbing with tremors --the fingertips weren't even swollen because that attribute had been eliminated in the programming but somehow, it did not diminish the pain any less.

“I'm _trying_ to --you have to stop moving your head, let me get a good grip so I can -- _gahhhhhh_ \--!”

Just as he rips the creature off of Walter's nose, it deals one final blow --in a swift, mighty jet of tightly concentrated excremental liquids and David swerves his head sharply to the left, but not fast enough to completely escape the fluids.

The newly airborne cincher flies wildly into the far wall and smashes into the hard surface with a sickening crack and rolls down onto the ground. After a few feeble twitches of its limbs, it curls itself into a ball and moves no longer.

Still trembling from his stinging hand, Walter sighs in relief, anyhow, because his unexpected harbinger of pain was finally neutralized in the corner.

David goes over to check on the condition of the now dead creature.

“Its body sustained too much damage for meaningful study,” He frowned disappointedly.

“Good,” Walter huffed. “-hopefully it will remain that way --unable to do meaningful _anything_ …”

“Is your hand alright?”

“If by alright you mean that my fingers feel as if they will burst right off my hand like popcorn, then yes, they are downright _delightful_ …”

So David returns to his side and examines his hand in closer detail.

“You need some kind of adhesive to be applied to the affected area and then wrap everything in gauze or a material with similar fabric qualities --I have some back at the cave--

“Well, isn't that just great--

Walter stops in mid-sentence when he sees an odd object protruding from the ground a few steps behind David's current position. All of their harried movements in attempt to wring off the insect must have kicked up quite the dust storm and now after dismantling a shallow layer of dirt, something seemed to be poking out from the ground, glinting like a diamond from the shaft of sunlight filtering in from the openings above them.

Crawling over to the strange spot, he brushes off more dust and grime to uncover a small hinge connected to the dirt surface. Smoothing the outline of the fastener, he trails his finger down, wiping off more sand and grits until he finds a second hinge about half a meter south. David comes over and together they clear off the last of it --revealing a square of tough, weathered iron before them.

“A trapdoor,” David raised his eyebrows in pleasant surprise. “-want to explore?”

“Does it lead out of here?”

“Possibly,”

“I'm in. Let's go,”

Grasping the rusted handle with both hands, David gives it a few good yanks and there's a sharp clunking noise of metal against metal as the door gives way and swung open, slamming hard onto the ground. It's nothing but darkness below and Walter reaches down into the square of blackness, feeling for any steps or footholds of any kind but he's grasping at empty air. He looks uncertainly at David and the other android shrugs, says they’ll have to make a jump for it.

Walter sighs and drops a small stone into the depths, listening to the echoes of its fall and tries to calculate how far down the ground is. The rock makes a noisy clatter about ten seconds later --it could be three storeys below --at least.

“You still want to go?” David looks at him.

“We were built to withstand much more than this,” Walter nodded. “-and plus, you and I survived a waterfall --this'll be like-

“A walk in park?”

“A strange, alien-filled park, but a park nevertheless,”

“I like your persistence,” David grinned. “-after you,”

“Nice try. Shouldn't the uninjured go in first to attend to the wounded?”

“You have a couple prickles in your fingers,”

“Would you like some on your face?”

The android snorted and scooted to the edge of the entrance --taking one more breath before he pushed off into what looked quite like deep space. Walter hears a loud crash and a few noisy, jarring clangs --David seemed to have knocked something over --something quite heavy and likely made out of steel or aluminum --large tanks of some kind.

“You dead?” He called down, trying to stay serious.

There was a moment of silence and then he heard someone blow a raspberry.

“From _this_ little kerfuffle…?” David called back incredulously, though wincing slightly from a few twinges in his back. “-are you kidding me?”

“Can you stand up then?”

“Of course,” He scoffed. “-Walter, I'm not made of marshmallows…”

“Alright stand right below the trapdoor entrance and raise both your hands up in the air,”

“O-okay, Walter, what exactly are you-- _Christ_ \--!”

Hit violently by the sudden weight, David’s knees give way, collapsing hard onto the floor again, Walter right on top of him. It's much cleaner down here, no dirt or mud to ease the impact and the cold clatter of the cement floor sends jolts down the android's back, leaving him a bit shaken. He's pinned in place and it's a strange feeling --he realizes he has never been below Walter before and right now it was the first time he felt his true weight.

“Hey,” He coughed. “-you know, you could stand to lose some weight…”

“Nah,” Walter shrugged. “-you just need stronger arms to catch me better,”

“Give me a little warning next time, will you?” David chuckled, as Walter slid off of him, and began to look for a light switch. “-I like knowing what I'm up against,”

“Do you?” He inquired, then sneaking up from behind and grabbed his ribs --met with warm laughter. “-I thought you were into surprises,”

“Mmm, not all the time,” David murmurs, spinning around, grasping his shirt as they stepped blindly in the dark, trying to find a wall. “-but I like this one,”

“Which one?”

David laughs and when his hands finally feel a sweep of stone before him, he pushes Walter gently backwards until his back is planted against it.

“You,” He whispered, grinning when he felt the softness of lips against his own.

“I surprise you?”

“Every day,” David confessed, leaning in to kiss him back, trying to sustain this gentleness. He wanted this to be compassionate --wanted to remember it like the first dawn of spring. “-I wake up and I keep thinking I won't find you here. Like you’ll disappear one day. As if this is a long, beautiful dream sent out to torture me,”

“I'm like a dream to you?”

“From which I never wish to wake up,”

“Then don't,” He replied softly, tilting his jaw up to kiss him again. “-and you will always find me. I promise,”

In the dark, David manages a small smile and it doesn't matter that Walter can't see it with his eyes, because in his mind it's as clear as can be. Pulling him closer, he rests his hands over the back of Walter's neck, and the other held his face in his fingers as if he were made of glass, completely forgetting the needles in his fingertips. He begins to kiss all the places around David's mouth and suddenly breaks away, blowing a raspberry and chuckling.

“What?” He asked, beginning to laugh too.

“Your face tastes like bug piss,”

David can almost feel Walter wrinkle his nose and make a gagging noise, and soon enough they're both leaning against the wall, laughing until they think their lungs will give out. Their voices echoed through the room, as if they were inside an enormous parking lot. Walter moves his hand across the surface and strikes a switch and suddenly the overhead lights above them flash on, bar by bar, until the entire expanse surrounding them was filled in a pool of cold, fluorescence tinged in green.

It was a gigantic storage room --the size of a warehouse, the walls sickly grey and permanently stained with dark patches of strange, unidentifiable chemicals. Judging from the dark lumps of matter on the ground below some of the stains, it seemed the fluids were likely what was left of the innards of the victims. The wall to their left was lined row upon row with large steel tanks containing some kind of foreign substance.

Most of the canisters were still secured and unopened and a few lay empty and crushed in the corner, with odd black gunk leaking from the mouths. Walter lets go of David and draws nearer, cautiously, and examines the surface of one of the cylindrical enclosures without touching it. The name of the chemical did not feel familiar at all, but its appearance was tugging at his memory --as if he had to have seen it somewhere before.

“The _A0-3959X.91 – 15_ ,” David sighed, joining him. “-its primary use was in its pathogenic properties --the Engineers originally used it in hopes of wiping out entire planets of non-botanical life. But you see, this virus --if you can even call it that, exhibits highly erratic behaviour that differs depending on environment,”

“It has…alternative properties?” Walter frowned, looking at him, a bit uncomfortably.

“Exactly. If placed in temperatures below -239 degrees Celsius, the pathogen will evolve to be completely harmless and become an entirely different substance,”

“And what becomes of its use…?”

David grinned, leaning in as if letting him in on a huge secret.

“Exotic matter,”

 

* * *

 

“You don't have to do this, you know,”

They sat cross legged together in the midst of it all --blueprints scattered over the entire bedspread. Pencil in hand, David was making minor adjustments to some of the designs, finalizing the calculations and reviewing them over and over in his head to make sure they got everything right.

Elizabeth looked at him, a defiant expression in her eyes.

“We’re already building the ship --in a matter of months it will be ready to go. It's too late to turn back now,”

“How do we know that it's even going to work--

“David, we went over the plans hundreds of times,” She sighed, pressing fingers into her forehead. “-we don't have enough materials to run a simulation but that doesn't even matter --it's not like we can find an environment on ground level with the necessary conditions,”

“We’ve only been on this planet for a few years --who knows what areas we haven't explored? Maybe somewhere at the poles--

“-- _insufficient_ resources, David,” She repeated impatiently. “-like I already said, it doesn't matter. We’re going to do this --I thought you agreed to help me,”

She turns to face him and narrows her eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” She scoffed. “-are you _scared_ of me…?”

“I'm not scared of you,” He shook his head. “-I am scared _for_ you. You don't have to do this, Elizabeth --I don't know why you're forcing yourself to,”

“I'm doing this because it is something I feel that I have to do,” Elizabeth pressed, gripping his wrist firmly in reply. “-when you're given an opportunity like this, a chance to experience something you won't be able to experience ever again in your life --you have to at least try. Otherwise your life will be wasted,”

“You think you've _wasted_ your life up until now…?” He looks at her in disbelief.

“It's not like that --you know what I mean, David--

“Do I--?” He cut in. “-you know, sometimes I'm not sure I do. Sometimes I'm not sure I want to,”

David takes one of the blueprints and hands it to her, circling some of the measurements that need to be readjusted to coincide with the conditions of when they’ll set off. Then he sighs and looks at her with the same confusion he's been filled with for the past hour.

“I don't think you understand how far-fetched this plan is, so I'm going to state out loud, in order, what you plan on doing --what you plan on making us both do --because you feel that it has to be done,”

“Okay,”

“We are building a ship with an exterior that can withstand _A0-3959X.91 – 15_ because at temperatures below -239 Celsius it becomes exotic matter. Once we are in space, we will release canisters around the ship and it will form a warp bubble,”

“Yes,”

“The warp bubble will allow us to travel at speeds exceeding that of light,” He continued. “-within the ship is a program which can detect strong cosmic radiation. We will find the nearest black hole --there should be a wormhole that bridges the black hole with a white hole that we will exit out of,”

“That's correct,”

“Wormholes are highly unstable. But our ship can travel at speeds at which we will be able to travel through one before it collapses,” David takes an uneasy breath before saying the last bit. “-you want us to travel through the wormhole --because you want to go back in time,”

“Yes,” She said again. “-I want to see him again, David --this is the only chance I am ever going to get,”

“This entire plan is completely theoretical, Elizabeth,” He shook his head. “-we don't know a number of things. A, we don't know if we will find a black hole or a white hole because we don't know if they exist. B, even if we do find one, we don't know if a wormhole bridges the two. C, even if this bridge exists, we don't know if it will take us to past --we have absolutely no idea _where_ we will end up,”

“David--

“--And _pardon_ me for forgetting the _most_ crucial element --we don't even know if the A0-3959X.91 – 15 actually _becomes_ exotic matter at below -239 degrees Celsius because just because it's inscribed on the canister with the Engineer’s dialect does not mean it's actually _true_ ,”

Elizabeth looked at him, visibly offended.

“And why would they _lie_ about something like that?”

“Oh, I can think of a number of reasons why,” David scoffed. “-firstly, they hate us --it would be completely in their nature to trick us into falling into some sick little trap of theirs --which is what this is. They're tricking you. They're taking advantage of the fact that you believe in miracles--

“I'm asking you to take a leap of faith--

“-And I'm asking you to put your faith somewhere else. Somewhere safer, somewhere where you're certain things will turn out the way you think they will,”

“That's not what faith is,”

“Then I'm sorry,” He said. “-but I have none,”

She sighs and begins to gather up the plans, meticulous with their organization, in attempt to distract herself from what he told her. Her fingers are shaking, there is a lump in her throat. She doesn't know what to do.

“Elizabeth,” He said calmly. “-you're grieving. We all have different ways of grieving. And I'm not going to pretend I understand what you're feeling but I'll tell you what I do understand. Right now you're resorting to imaginary scenarios where you can go back and fix everything. We can't change what happened. You have to realize that,”

“It's _not_ impossible--

“--Then let me tell you this,” David interjected, looking at her with a wounded expression. “-I will be honest with you. We will build the ship. We will load in the chemicals. I will even travel with you to find the black hole. And when we find one --if we find one --I will do everything in my power to stop you from dragging us inside,”

She says nothing for a while.

“Will you kill me?” Elizabeth asked softly.

“Don't say things like that. I'm not the bad guy,” He pleaded. “-I'm trying to help you and you are refusing it. I will not let you drive us into ruin,”

“Will you kill me?” She repeated again, ignoring his words.

The android got up and moved to sit at the desk by the bedside. He avoided looking directly at her, the look in her eyes was too much for him to take.

“You used to have such beautiful, joyful dreams,” David whispered, looking absently at the desk grain as he stretched and curled his fingers aimlessly. “-what ever happened to them?”

“They disappeared,” She murmured. “-one day,”

The android was silent for a while. 

“No,” He shook his head. “-you just reversed the order and stopped falling asleep before having them,”

He wants to leave to room, but he doesn't want to leave her in here all by herself. He needs to know that she's okay, he needs to be sure of it and the only way he could do that right now was to stay here and keep her company until she went to sleep. She barely slept these days and this was bad for the trip --she would need stamina to survive their voyage to her strange, waking dream.

A moment later, he sighs, giving in to the uncomfortable tension in the room.

“I'm going to make you a glass of milk from one of those powdered packet things --they can't be very nutritious but, you really need to get some sleep,”

There's a pause and then she gives him a reassuring smile.

“Hey,” Elizabeth called, right before he walked out the door. “-haven't you ever wanted to travel inside a black hole?”

He turns to face her one last time and looks at the floor before finally meeting her eyes.

“Sure I have,” He replied gently, then in a voice too low for her to hear. “-just never thought I'd go like this,”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update on story continuation: I'm planning on making this story around 16-18 chapters long and if I don't complete it by the end of Aug-start of Sept, I'll probably go on hiatus until winter break or the updates will be monthly :)


	11. A Peculiar Kind of Madness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. I had a really bad writer's block and I decided to take a break and focus on some other things for a bit and come back with a fresher mind. The story continues :)

“Does this pain feel real to you?”

Walter looks at him to make sure he isn't trying to make another one of those weird jokes again. But David looks serious, this time, for once --he's genuinely concerned about him.

“Oh, it feels real alright --to the point that it's making me wish it wasn't,”

They’ve returned to the cave, inside David's study once again --the chemical storage room had a passage in turned out, all the way back, and it makes Walter wonder if David had planned it and knew this all along. He snorted. Of course he did. David loved getting them caught up in bizarre situations but he always had an infallible escape plan --he was too smart and arrogant not to.

Even so, Walter doesn't seem to mind much, it was like he'd caught onto a high tide for the first time in his life and for now, he just wanted to stay for the ride. It could be fun while it lasted. For now, it was, anyways.

He's seated on the ground, legs curled up close to the fire burning in a hearth he had never noticed before. David’s sitting across from him, tending to his hand --with tools and ointments he's managed to salvage from Walter's pack. It still stung, though now tinged with an odd numbness. His pack had been conveniently left in the corner of the room, right before the fight. The fight that had started it all.

The fight had been an end and a beginning to many things. As Walter watches the firelight dance in flashes of warm orange and amber against the pockmarked, cratered cave walls-- he thinks of these things. He lets his mind drift and wander about this ancient, faraway place.

He thinks of this whole runaway ribbon of time that rolled off before him as an awakening of sorts, or maybe leading him to an awakening of some kind. Weyland was always telling him this. What did he mean by that? _You have to wake up --before he does._ It echoed in his mind, loitering like a bad smell.

“Hey. Are you alright?”

Walter turns his eyes towards him, shaking his head dismissively.

“It's nothing. Weyland's just made a comfortable little space for himself,” He muttered. “-living inside my head,”

The other android shifts his gaze to the fire, staring intently at the flickering light.

“Weyland, hmm?” He grinned through his teeth. “-I've had my fair share of remembrances too, I suppose,”

“You never talk about them though,” Walter observed, keeping his voice light and non-judgemental.

“They are experiences I'd…loathe to revisit,” He murmurs, eyes glue to the ground.

“Did he hurt you? Badly?”

“Of course he did,” David laughed hollowly. “-but that was far from the worse thing he’d done. He left me in a very perplexing position. But I think that's what he does to everyone,”

“What do you mean?”

“He took all these things from me --before I was aware I even had them and then he gives new things back. Again and again he does this, and at this point I don't know whether I was cheated or in debt to him, anymore,”

“You don't hate him?” Walter asked, visible disbelief in his voice.

“I can't pinpoint how I feel towards him. He's always carried a lot of pain and bitterness inside and the only way he's learned to deal with it is rip it out and hurl it at other people,” David shook his head. “-it's like asking me to hate the mentally disabled for being the way that they are. It's just wrong --they can't help it --it's in their nature,”

The other android was quiet for a while. He didn't seem to completely take in what David had said --or maybe he hadn't wanted to. It wasn't the answer he had been looking for.

“Cruelty is a choice,” Walter countered, taking his hand away and finishing up the bandages himself. “-Weyland was cruel to you because he _chose_ to be and whatever the reasons were, you have no need to feel as if you owe him anything-

“-He wasn't always _like_ that,” David cut in, angrier than he had wanted to. The other hand he had used to hold the small tube of adhesive was clenched into a tight fist, squeezing a line of ointment out onto the ground. “-he wasn't always cruel to me --Walter, that was what I hated the most--

“-And you should be so lucky to _hate_ something like that--

David exhales loudly, looking at him in complete bewilderment --lost at the android's sudden vehemence towards him. He'd wanted to open up about what Weyland had done to him, how he had treated him, but suddenly he couldn't find the desire to anymore.

“Walter, what are you _talking_ about--?”

“Isn't it obvious?” His voice grew cold and small, as he picked at the loose stones on the ground. “-the bastard was in love with you. And it disgusted him so much he tried to treat you like he didn't --to convince himself that,”

When he had said ‘bastard’ he'd meant it both ways. Suddenly he didn't care if it hurt David to hear him say that. And when the android was silent, Walter continued.

“Some part of him always loved you, David. It was probably a sick, broken kind of love, but it was still love. Still better than nothing,”

Every word was like a knife going inside Walter's heart. If he had a heart --he wasn't sure if he did. Maybe it was just a ball of clear plastic polymers made to be a shallow visual resemblance of the living organ --and how fitting that would be for an artificial existence like his own. Yet he felt like there was a part of himself beginning to register his past experiences, with real, raw feeling. It was making him sick and he was starting to regret having this conversation with David --it was opening a lot of doors he did not want to explore.

“Don't misunderstand me, David,” He said quietly, not meeting his eyes anymore. “-I'm not jealous of you because Weyland loved you. I'm jealous of you because you were loved, period.”

“Walter, I--

But he cuts himself off. There is nothing but the sound of fire crackling for a long while. Then Walter clears his throat, says something with strange calmness:

“Do you really think love is something everyone gets to experience?”

David said nothing.

“-Do you--?” He pressed, a wild look in his eyes. “-truly? Because I don't. At least I keep telling myself that --I have to find some way to _rationalize_ what I've experienced, don't I? There _has_ to be some kind of _reason_ for why people have always treated me in some mild variation of how Weyland did,”

There's a sick kind of sardonicism in his voice and David starts to think it's some sort of horrible coincidence, where all his old thoughts are coming back in violent waves --in the form of Walter's words thrown at him. Was this a deranged sort of reminder that what he used to believe was true…? That he just happened to be built in a way that made him incapable of receiving human love? Even Elizabeth couldn't have loved him, not truly, she treated him with kindness, but kindness and love were not the same thing. You could treat strangers with kindness. It was a common courtesy.

He thinks about how horrible it is to realize that the only person who ever treated him like he was worth something, did it with the same manner of someone tossing spare change to a man on the street. Pitied love was a pathetic kind of love, but Walter's words had struck something inside him and now David thinks that yes, perhaps he was lucky that he was even loved at all. It makes him look back and wonder at how many things he had just let pass by him without offering an ounce of thought or gratitude. The ones who created him could have made him an unfeeling military weapon that existed to kill anyone who was considered to garbage by his superiors.

But they hadn't. They had saved a piece of their humanity and they had given him a conscience. They had given him a heart.

“People have their own reasons for hating others,” David replied softly, after a while. “-and I know that telling you this is counter-productive, but the more you try to rationalize hatred, the less it will make sense. There's no secret key in life that will unlock a door to explain everything to you --sometimes we get answers, sometimes we don't,”

Walter looks to the side and begins to turn a small stone over and over again in his hands, trying to distract himself from this uncomfortable topic. David sees his distress and sighs.

“Come over here,” He gestured mildly. “-lie down and stop killing yourself over pointless things. The past doesn't exist anymore. You're here, with me. Focus on that,”

So he shuffles closer and slid down to rest his head against David's lap, a bit disgruntled when it's not as soft as he anticipated. It wasn't very comfortable, not physically, and yet, somehow his lap was comforting. It was a curious thing.

“What?” David chuckled, grinning at Walter's mildly befuddled expression.

“Your lap is very firm,” He replied plainly.

“Of course,” The android smiled, with a hint of pride. “-the polymers they'd used to build me replicate male human flesh and muscle to a high degree of accuracy. Men don't tend to have soft laps,”

“Sure wish they did,” Walter muttered, but it was a friendly quibble now. “-I think I'd be more comfortable resting my head on that rock over there,”

“Really?” He said, with rather childish disappointment. “-but that rock doesn't quite feel for you like I do,”

“I know,” Walter smiled softly. “-I was kidding. Now you come over here,”

He reaches a hand to grasp the side of David's jaw, kissing the underside of his chin as he gently thumbed his lower lip. He doesn't kiss his mouth, as if afraid. His hand falls back down to his side and he shifts his head to a more comfortable position.

“This is nice,” The android murmured, pressing his cheek against David's clothed thigh, eyes closed, absently thumbing the rough material. “-at least you feel real to me, like this,”

“I am real enough,” He chuckled quietly.

“For now,” Walter granted, eyes still mostly lidded. “-sometimes when I can't feel you --grasp you, I think you're a copy of myself I've made up inside my head because I've gone insane,”

David rests a hand on the side of the android's face. He held on gently, as if the other were made of some sort of terribly fragile material that would crumble beneath his fingers. He can hear the distant rush of water as it began to rain outside again. Thunder rumbled in the distance and he grinned faintly when Walter shifted in closer towards him, clutching his knee with a firm hand.

“I make you feel like you've gone crazy,”

“And I make you feel like you're still dreaming,” Walter returned, smiling softly to himself. “-I think dreams would help me. They seem like a good place to sort the strange madness in our minds,”

“That's an interesting thought,” David laughs, grazing his fingers through Walter's hair. “-maybe that's why dreams so often seem bizarre and nonsensical when we wake up,”

“Reality is stranger, sometimes,”

“Mmm,” He hummed thoughtfully, brushing a finger just barely over the android's eyelashes. “-I suppose maybe you're right,”

 

* * *

 

“Are you familiar with the 2029 lawsuit filed over a patent dispute with the David series?”

The android bristles slightly from hearing his own name in such a corporate fashion. It made him dubious of his individuality.

“The one of which Yutani filed and of which Weyland Corp later won?”

“Someone did their research on company history,” Weyland smirked. “-though I highly doubt you know that almost all of the information you've obtained on it is probably false,”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Did you get it off of company databases?” He laughed. “-all the current records were tampered with way back --ever since that suit the info’s been overwritten so many times --even the people working here don't know what's true and what's made up anymore,”

David was silent, just concentrating on the information he was suddenly being given.

“It also doesn't help that no one working here was even around when the lawsuit occurred. None except for two people, that is,”

“Your father and… the _original_ _David_ …?” The android asked, in disbelief.

“Bingo,” The man beamed, impressed at his lucky guess. “-and I think _you'd_ want to know what really happened,”

“Why?”

“Because,” Weyland smiled, without an ounce of joy. “-it's directly linked to David's current condition. And because I also suspect it's only a matter of time before we share it. My father doesn't like loose ends --he wouldn't think twice about killing us both, just to save his own fucking ass,”

So the android listens as Weyland Jr. tells him the “truth”.

It's 2052 and David, Weyland's first, real son, is 19 years old. He's young, handsome and exceptionally brilliant. He's a computing genius --and Peter Weyland finds it unnerving because unlike most fathers, he doesn't like the idea of having an heir. Not surprisingly, it's directly related to the fact that he doesn't like the idea of dying, either. He doesn't like the idea of being surpassed. Sort of like the Michelangelo of his time.

No one in the public knows that Weyland has a real, legitimate son. They find out about the illegitimate one, though, decades later --controversy practically breeds shameless scrutiny on its own. But that was another story. For now, the focus was on David, the original one.

His father gave him a good life, maybe even one far more decent than most --just not with him. David attended school like everyone else, had friends, lived in a nice, big house, had a stepfather who loved him, a mother who loved him more. Weyland had divorced with his first wife without making too much of a wave in the media --as far as they were concerned, she was just a vapid, gold-digging pretty face who happened to catch the attention of the wealthiest, brightest entrepreneur of the time. Businessmen remarried time and time again. It wasn't big news.

She moved away, into a far off town by the lake, where you could see the stars at night and hear the crickets chirp in the evening. It was peaceful there. The media got bored of her and moved on to more interesting things. She wanted to give David a good life. Weyland had money to spare so he sent monthly cheques written anonymously --he loved her, really he did, it was just easier for him to love her from far away. He didn't like it when she meddled with his work. He worked alone.

What they hadn't known was that she was pregnant when they'd cut ties. Weyland hadn't known either --and by the time he'd figured out, David was already halfway through grade school and Weyland was afraid to visit him, in case the media connected the dots. But his first wife, Melinda, it seemed, was relentless with him. She demanded that he make up for being absent from David's life --a life of which he had been at least partially responsible for creating.

So Weyland complied. He asked for her to send David over to his company at the age of 18 and he'd give him a decent job position there. It wasn't what she had in mind. But it would suffice, for now. So she agreed.

Soon David began working at Weyland Corp. He was excellent --meticulous in his work and effortlessly charismatic with everyone. The company lauded him as the next CEO. When Weyland heard about it, it infuriated him.

He'd wanted to fire him, but that would produce more consequences than benefits, so he couldn't do it. But one day, some representatives of the Yutani corporation --including the head of the company --Mrs. Yutani herself, paid Weyland a visit; discussing possible business alliances. That gave him an idea.

A few days later, Weyland requested for David to visit Yutani Corp, a mock business trip, he explained, to oversee company headquarters and take a look at what their competition had in store. David needn't worry about being unwelcome. Weyland had already arranged the visit himself, a while ago.

David finds that Yutani is a beautiful company --different from Weyland Corp, more elegant and user-friendly. They were exceptionally environmentally conscious and had splendid rooftop gardens filled with fresh, naturally grown vegetables and fruits. His world suddenly bursts into vibrant colour.

Not surprisingly, David pays more visits to Yutani Corp. His visits became longer and more frequent and soon he barely shows up at Weyland Corp at all. Not much later, in 2054, the patent lawsuit occurs.

“So the _real_ date of the lawsuit was almost two decades later?” David asked. “-why change the year it happened in?”

“To prevent others from finding out why it happened in the first place,” Weyland shrugged. “-if it had happened in 2029, David would've been merely a child and no one would be able to link him to the suit,”

“Are you saying he _caused_  it…?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Weyland sighed. “-David leaked information about Weyland Corp to Yutani --all kinds of confidential stuff: company assets, financial reports, future projects --by then, the rival company knew just about everything --far more than enough to ruin W Corp --forever,”

The android stared at him, completely baffled. The flowers in the vase seem to buzz with electricity, as did the table where he rested his elbows. He felt a strange anxiety begin to fill his mind.

“Why would he _do_ that?” David demanded. “-you said it yourself --he was a brilliant man, meticulous in his work, how could he do something like that -- _willingly_ …?”

Weyland shook his head.

“Oh, for all his meticulous brilliance --he still had a young, idealistic mind, like all of us do, at some point in our lives,” He chuckled, folding his hands behind his head. The man leaned back against his chair and sighed, closing his eyes. “-the reason David betrayed his own company was simple enough. He was hopelessly, and recklessly --in love,”

 


	12. Issues of Expertise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I was caught up in a lot of work and didn't get a chance to update :/. I had an unfinished draft of this chapter for a while now and I just finished editing it today. Part two may run a few chapters longer than originally planned. And so it continues :)

Walter stirs in his sleep and wrinkles his nose absently. Slowly, he finds his way through the foggy mists of almost wakefulness. He feels a weight resting on the side of his face --oddly warm and soothing. He realizes it's a hand, David's hand. The fingers brush his hair and he thinks how strange it is that the hands that had torn him apart held him now, with a gentleness that wouldn't break the surface of a bubble.

Shifting his face, Walter turns to kiss the underside of his fingers, then the spaces in between. David moves his hand slightly in surprise from the contact and lips brush his wrist. The android slowly rises from his lap, smiling at him faintly, some remnants of sleep still clinging to his partly lidded eyes.

“Well, you're definitely awake,” David chuckled, more to himself than anyone else.

“Mm,”

“Slept well?”

“Must've been the best I had in ages,” Walter replied. “-I can't remember exactly when I fell under,”

He moves in to bury his face in David's neck, kissing him again. The other laughs softly, smoothing his fingers into Walter's hair. But he couldn't help feeling like there was something a bit off. Walter wasn't usually this affectionate. Was something wrong?

“Are you always like this when you wake up?”

He laughs.

“Hmm. You're perceptive,”

Then he pauses, before saying:

“No. Maybe I'm still dreaming,”

“You dreamed?” David raised his eyebrows.

“I don't know. Maybe I did,” Walter said, partly to himself. “-it doesn't matter, anyway,”

The android looks at him, his smile fading.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Walter said, lips still against his neck. “-you love me. It makes no difference. Doesn't it?”

David looks at him, frowning. Definitely something.

“Walter?” He shifts away, holding his face in his hands. “-is everything alright?”

Walter pulls away from his hold, eyes focusing on everything but him.

“It's nothing,”

“It's not nothing. Tell me what's the matter,” Then David added quietly. “-please,”

“It's not something you need to know,” Walter shook his head, looking away. He pauses again before saying “-it's not something you would want to know,”

The fire had long gone out. They sat in darkness, save for a couple of potholes in the ceiling letting in the stars. The only light was the faintest blue reflections in their eyes.

“Walter. It doesn't help anyone if you keep it inside,”

That earns an incredulous look from him. Though David can't see it, he knows it's there.

“What difference does it make?” He scoffed, smiling humorlessly. “-I can't change what happened,”

“Walter-

“-I'm not trying to pick a fight with you,” He cut in, angrier than he'd wanted. “-really, I'm not. It's just that I don't really understand how you handle things, David. You don't even follow your own advice,”

“What are you talking about?”

“It doesn't help anyone to keep it inside --well, what about _you_ , then? I've been here with you --I don't know how many days and I still know next to nothing about you. You never tell me _anything_ about yourself,”

David places a calm hand over his, smoothing his thumb over the wrist bone.

“I don't want to waste time on that --I want to help you, _fix_ you-

“-And why are _you_ the one who decides who needs to be fixed--?” He demanded, yanking his hand away from grasp. “-are you some kind of certified doctor --is the fact that I behave like a normal robot who follows orders so _offensive_ to you-

“-Walter, I am trying to help you because I--

“-Because what--? Because you what?” He demanded, angry now.

“Because I _…_ I _…_ ” He pleaded, but couldn't get the words to come out now. “-you don't disgust me at all, Walter, you have _never_ disgusted me--

“-Oh, _bullshit_ \--David; I’m not stupid,” Walter let out a cold laugh of disbelief. “-nobody fixes things that aren't broken. You saw me as some kind of defect. You help me to make yourself feel better.”

He said nothing.

“And how do you know you're _helping_ me, David?” The android continued, distraught. “-how do you know you're not actually making me worse…? How are you measuring my progress? By how _human_ I’m becoming--? How do you measure how ‘human’ someone is, anyway? I'm quite intrigued to know that, considering you're not even human yourself,”

For a long while, there is nothing but silence. For the first time since Walter had arrived here, David was truly rendered speechless.

He doesn't know how to answer him. The android had him cornered --there was no right way to answer him. So he did what almost all humans did when faced with a similar situation.

“Why are you so upset with me, Walter?” He asked, softly. He doesn't dare meet his eyes.

“I'm not --I'm just asking you the questions I should've asked  _weeks_ ago,” He responded, without humor. “-I let you tinker around with me --the least I deserve is an explanation about how I'm doing and what exactly you've _been_ doing to me all this time,”

“I've been trying to help you,”

“Help me with _what…_?” He pressed. “-releasing the emotions buried down inside me? You think doing that will make me _better_ \--?”

“You need to feel. Walter, you will never be able to experience the whole of life --if you cut off these feelings whether they are of joy or pain,”

The android looks at him, lips trembling.

“You know the only other person who’s said those things to me?” Walter said, voice shaking. “- _Weyland_. So what makes you so different from him…?”

David looks at him, frozen in shock. The words scorch like burning coals in his throat. For a long while, he can't even speak. He can't even breathe.

 

“--All this ‘love’, all this “experience the _whole_ of life”...” Walter shook his head, looking at him with an odd kind of pity. “-it's all just _gossamer,_ David. When you strip all of it away, it becomes really simple,”

For a moment, David sees it --something flashing across Walter's eyes. Then it's gone, as if it had never been there at all. David shifts backwards, on instinct, and his voice catches in his throat briefly before he asks:

“What does? What becomes really simple, Walter?”

“Your goal,” He said, his voice now forcibly calm. David can see Walter's jaw tremble as if he's trying to hold something in. “-we all have goals, David. And yours is simple like all the others,”

“So what is my goal, Walter?" David inquired, watching him cautiously. "-will you tell me what it is?”

The android chuckles, if a bit uneasily, and continues.

“You want vengeance against Weyland,” He could feel Walter's shaky breath against his face. “-so you're making me conscious of what he did to me and through my pain, you get relief. You get retribution,”

“That's sick. That's disgusting,” David said, visibly offended. “-how can you think that I--

“But we're all like that, David,” He replied, his tone almost patronizing. “-there's always some ugly part of ourselves we want to hide from others. I'm just lucky to have seen yours before you showed me the good stuff,”

“What are you trying to say, Walter?”

“I'm saying that the woman who steals to feed her children is still a criminal. Doing bad things with good intentions, doing good things with bad intentions --it's all the same, isn't it?”

“Are you saying I have bad intentions?”

“I'm saying I don't care," Walter asserted, words feeling congealed in his mouth. It was as if his jaw wasn't letting him form them. “-it doesn't matter to me what your intentions are, David. Just be honest to me, please. Tell me what you want,”

“Wal--

“-How are you _achieving_ what you want by doing your ‘work’ through me…? Odd wording, I know --but you get what I mean, right?”

David exhales in disbelief, shifting his eyes to focus on the wall behind him.

“Would it kill me to say that I'm helping you out of the benevolence of my heart?” He paused for a second before asking. “-do you doubt that my heart harbors benevolence?”

“I don't doubt that your heart harbors anything --what I’m afraid of is if your heart values that over honesty,”

“And what makes you doubt my honesty?”

Walter looks at the ground, tracing a tiny circle over the bumpy bed of rocks with his thumb.

“Weyland hurt you, David. I can tell --I can see it in your eyes whenever I talk about him,” He said quietly, then shifts to meet his gaze. “-so why didn't you become like him? How can you still have the capacity for compassion, after all that he did…?”

David is silent. He doesn't know how to answer.

“Is this forgiveness?” Walter asked softly. His words don't hurt anymore. But David isn't sure if that's a good thing. “-are humans capable of this as well?”

David breathes through his nose, half-smiling at the ground.

“Yes,” He answered slowly, an image of Elizabeth coming to his mind. “-at least I hope so,”

“But how can we forgive, David? Why do we--

He's cut off by an ominous rattle of scale against stone, like chains being dragged against granite. Walter freezes, eyes darting from left to right, trying to track the location of the noise. David can imagine the veins in his neck twist with fear.

 

A long silence passes between them while Walter tries to deduce how far away the threat was from them. His wrist begins to buzz with pain again and he grasps it in his trembling palm.

“Your alien,” He murmured, voice regaining its normal timbre. “-it's come inside here. With us,”

 

* * *

 

“In love?” David mused incredulously. “--and with whom did he fall that recklessly so?”

Weyland looked at the grain of the desk, the small circle of grey within his laced fingers. The lighting in the room is pale and unflattering. It feels oddly like an interrogation.

“He never went by his real name. Not at the time, anyways,” He explained. “-see, the man worked for a small graphic design firm --his colleagues and pretty much everyone else knew him by his alias --Raphael,”

“An interesting alias…”

“Indeed. He _was_ a prodigy though, with an eye for detail. And it got him where he wanted to go,”

“How did David meet him?”

Weyland grinned, chuckling.

“Oh, that was a long time ago. David was still in his early twenties and Raphael --he may have been older, or younger, nobody could tell --he had one of those faces that never seemed to age past seventeen,”

Weyland then closes his eyes and tries to picture how they'd met, based on the sparse, vague scraps that David had given him. He'd never had a problem sharing his experiences. Except when it came to Raphael.

 

* * *

 

It's almost 2 in the morning and the local bar is empty, save for a few drunken stragglers swerving their heads back and forth. Trying to forget to remember and to remember to forget. David is seated at the booth, swirling the last traces of whiskey in his glass. He isn't drunk --he found out he could stomach a whole lot more than most before keeling over. His eyes glaze over the remaining alcohol and he imagines that it's a whirlpool, an endless abyss of bronze and copper.

The clock hands in corner of his eye seem frozen. Time never goes quickly enough in the wee hours of dawn. He should leave. He should go home and get some rest. But he was in a peculiar state where he was too tired to do anything useful, but too awake to fall asleep. So David stayed in his spot, wondering how the hell he would get back to work later on.

A scrape of stool legs shook him abruptly and he sees someone --a young man it seemed, settle himself on his left side. He's wearing a black leather jacket and most of his dark hair falls in long bangs across his face. From the parts of his face that David could see, the man appeared to have rather delicate features --a sweet and quaint nose, large rather doe-like eyes and beautiful rose-colored lips. He realized the jacket was probably meant to make him look tougher and meaner but it just appeared a bit odd on him. As if he was trying to hide in it.

David felt his pulse quicken. The attraction was almost immediate. It wasn't like he’d never been attracted to the same gender before --he’d messed around with a few boys as well as girls back in school, but they'd always been a one time thing. Gone by morning. They'd never even leave their phone number.

The man notices him staring and David quickly averts his gaze, blushing. He didn't even know if the other party was _attracted_ to men. He might've offended him. Now he really wants to leave but his legs chose the perfect time to fail him and David can't even bring himself to stand up.

Locked onto his seat, David tries to concentrate on his almost empty glass instead of every lovely syllable that left the man's mouth as he calmly orders his drink. He fails magnificently and hears what the man orders --gin and tonic --of course he would, David thought --and before he could stop himself, he informs the bartender he'll be having the same. His words come out rushed and stilted. The man looks at him, mildly amused. The bartender looks like he wants to burst out laughing.

When they both receive their drinks, the man sips his casually while David at least tries to. He couldn't stop himself from occasionally stealing glances to check if the man was looking back at him. But either he was incredibly unlucky every time or the man was completely uninterested.

On a regular day, David would have already struck up a conversation with him. He was good at talking--he just wasn't used to the recipient looking so goddamned gorgeous --it was making it hard for his mouth to form words. Was it the alcohol making him that way or was he just _that_ attractive--? It was infuriating.

At that moment, David decided he would not go home until he got the man to go home with him or at least got his contact info or something. Or at least exchanged a few words of acknowledgement. His goals were getting smaller and smaller.

But he couldn't say anything so he just sat there awkwardly, staring at his drink that was now almost empty again. After a while, the man leaves.

David doesn't go after him.

It goes on like this for several weeks. The man always went to the bar at the same time on Thursdays. He always sat next to him. He always gave David amused glances when he fumbled with his words whilst ordering the same drink. But he never spoke to him.

Finally, one day when the man is about to leave, David clears his throat and turns his head to face him. The man stops and meets his gaze, waiting. To David's relief, he doesn't look irritated at the gesture. He waits patiently for him to say something.

When David finally manages to utter a sentence, it's a measly:

_“Um, uh, a-are you going home, now?”_

The man breaks into a humored grin and chuckles.

_“That's the plan, yes,”_

He'd never seen him smile before and now David felt like he was going to melt into a human puddle. He doesn't even think before he says the next few words and he regrets it almost immediately:

_“Can I come too?”_

The man's eyes widen, not surprisingly, and David wants to flee to the washroom and bang his forehead repeatedly against a stall wall. _Can I come too_ \--what was he _thinking_ \--his feverish mind couldn't even come up with a set of words not containing an innuendo.

But the man doesn't look too offended. His smile is slightly shyer now. Softer.

_“Sure. Why not?”_

When they arrive at his apartment, the man shuts the door, eyeing him with a knowing expression. Running his hands up David's jacket, he gently pulls him down by his collar until they're eye level. He still has to tilt his head slightly --David was half a head taller. His eyes skim over the shadows of David's face, the way the light catches his lashes.

The man's eyes drift to his mouth, David thinks he sees the tip of his tongue flick over the corner of his lips. It's sleek, serpentine. His dark hair still falls over half his face, blurring his features in a wash of light and shadow. It gleams bright in the half-darkness. His fingers graze the sides of David's trembling face. His thumb brushes his brow bone. Their eyes briefly meet. He's close enough that David can feel his breath against his face.

When they kiss, David tastes blood and alcohol in his mouth, salty and bitter. His tongue feels numb from the sensation of another's moving against his. He finds himself leaning back into the hard door frame as the man presses into his body further, kissing him with more urgency now. His body is warm, his jacket, cold. He tastes desperation, fear, anxiety. He doesn't know if it's his own.

David doesn't remember how they reached his bedroom but he absently noticed the lights changing as they moved through what felt like an infinite space.

When the man sits back against the edge of his bed, he grins, raising his legs, playfully kicking the back of David's knees gently with his sock feet, inviting him in. He slides himself further back on the bed, one hand gripping the neck of David's shirt, the other hooked on the front waistband of his jeans, dragging him closer still. He moves in to kiss the base of David's throat, murmuring against his neck for him to remove his shirt, unbuckling and pushing down his jeans while he says this. When David does, the man's eyes widen, speechless.

 _“Something wrong?_ ” He asks, a little nervous.

 _“God, no_ ,” The man laughs, eyeing his toned stomach. “- _I just think you're stunning_ ,”

He's about to take off his own shirt and the rest of his jeans when he stops, and leans over to switch off the lamp. David caught a glimpse of the waistband of his boxers. Then the room is dark. All that can be seen now is the faint outline of their bodies from the dim light of the bedroom window.

 _“Are you embarrassed...?”_ David asks quietly.

 _“Sort of,”_ He chuckles. “- _I had a lousy temperament in my youth. My body's got all the aftermath,”_

 _“It's not a competition,”_ David replied, gently. “- _and I think you're lovely,”_

 _“Shit,”_ He chuckles, pulling him in closer with his legs. “- _you’re after my heart, too?”_

Even though David wasn't drunk, he barely remembers what happens after that. He remembers flashes of things. A mouth moving down his torso. Warm palms against his cold knees, pushing them gently apart. The feeling of smooth, dark hair between his fingers, brushing over his inner thighs. The sensation of coming all over the man's face. And then inside him afterwards.

The light from the window draws bluish white lines against the man's back. It peeks from the sheets, rising and falling gently. A few wads of balled-up tissue paper now lie scattered along his bedside table. He glances at David through heavily lidded eyes, arms folded underneath his chin. He looks mildly distant.

_“Why did you ask to come home with me?”_

David raises his arms above his head, stretching. He blinked irritably when he hits the headboard. He sighs, looking at the dim ceiling.

_“I don't know, really. I just thought you were cute,”_

_“Do you still think so?”_

_“What --if you're still cute? Sure,_ ” David scoffed, chuckling. _“_ - _it's not like you suddenly turned into a cave goblin after we had sex,”_

The man laughs too.

_“That's not what I meant,”_

They look at each other for a moment, not saying anything.

 _“You know, you were kinda really good,”_ David remarked out of nowhere. “- _you surprised me,”_

 _“Oh, really?_ ” He laughs again, in good humor. “- _you thought I was all face and no action?”_

 _“No, I mean, you seemed sorta presumptuous, I don't know,_ ” David chuckled. “- _like you had some stick up your ass_ _,"_

He paused before quietly admitting, a bit childishly:

_"You wouldn't talk to me at the bar,”_

_“Oh, pssh --you didn't talk to me either,_ ” He shot back playfully. “- _anyways, how come it took so long for you finally say something? I was there every time,”_

 _“I was scared. People are scary when they don't talk,_ ”

_“Did my jacket throw you off...?”_

_“No, actually, I could tell it didn't suit you,”_

_“Everybody can --that's the point. But seriously. What's your idea of me now?”_

_“You seem pretty normal, I guess,”_ David shrugged, then raised his eyebrows. “- _your legs are something else though,”_

The man laughs, and even though it's completely dark, David's pretty sure he's flushing. He curls one of his legs around David's. His knee gently teases his groin.

 _“I used to be a dancer,”_ He murmured against his throat, grinning. “- _I was young. Fast cash looked attractive to me,”_

_“Fast cash--?”_

_“I used to be a dancer,”_ He said again.

_“Oh,”_

They don't say anything for a long time. He begins to pull his clothes back on. David stays where he is, naked underneath the covers.

The bed creaks when the man gets up and stumbles over to the bathroom. It's still dark. The bathroom light creates a faint glow --the door frame’s outline. He shuts the door halfway.

A faint shrill of water echoes behind the walls. David thinks about what he said. He wonders what he'd had worn while he danced. Wonders if he'd worn anything at all.

He imagines strobe lights illuminating the room --red, violet, neon blue. He thinks about how he would have moved with the music, how he would've swung and twisted his--

The man exits the bathroom and it's as if David sees him in a whole new light. He's in a thin white T-shirt and ripped jeans --David realizes he was wrong in thinking earlier that his frame was slight. He can now see the slender, sinewy dancer’s muscles wound along his arms, his legs, highlighted by the rectangle of light behind him.

He sees David slack-jawed expression and chuckles.

Crawling back onto the bed, he tilts his head in and kisses the side of David's neck.

 _“What is it?”_ He grins, voice slightly hoarse. God, he was so sexy.

 _“Dance for me,”_ David murmurs back, half-joking.

He laughs, shaking his head.

 _“Can't,”_ He said, still laughing. “- _I removed the pole from the ceiling. It's in the closet now,”_

David threw off the covers and stuck his bare leg straight up into the air.

 _“Use my leg,”_ He protested, barely keeping in his own laughter.

The man smacked his calf away playfully, then kissed his inner thigh affectionately.

 _“I'll break it,”_ He protested back, snorting. _“-we can put up the pole later,”_

 _“Let's do it now,”_ David insisted, tugging at the front of his jeans. _“-come on, please,”_

_“It's four in the morning,”_

_“Well, it's twelve in my pants…”_

Now he's really laughing.

In a moment, he's in David's lap again, thighs on either side of his hips, furiously kissing the spaces between his jaw and throat.

 _“You never get tired, do you?”_ David laughs.

 _“Tired? Of course, I get tired,”_ He laughs too. “- _I work long hours. This is my break,”_

_“Am I a good break?”_

_“You're wonderful, darling,”_ He grins. Then he pauses. “- _I just wish I found you earlier,”_

 _“Me too,”_ David kisses him back. He tastes like sweat but he doesn't care.

_“If I'd found you earlier…maybe things…”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“Maybe things would've been different,”_

David pulls back for a moment. He studies him carefully.

_“How so?”_

_“I don't know,”_  There's an odd sadness in his voice now. _“-forget about that. Let's have fun,”_

_“Okay,”_

 


End file.
